Brightstar Lottery has announced that Renato Ascoli, Chief Executive Officer of Global Lottery, will step down from his position amid a broad reorganization of the group’s senior leadership team.
Ascoli will officially vacate his role on June 30, finishing a one-year tenure. Prior to joining the firm, he managed several executive divisions at IGT before the structural breakup of the wider conglomerate last year.
Following Ascoli’s departure, Marco Tasso will ascend to the position of Executive Vice President and Chief Operations Officer for Global Lottery. Tasso currently acts as the Chief Operations Officer for International and Italy Operations. In his new role, Tasso assumes direct accountability for all of Brightstar’s global lottery verticals, overseeing technology infrastructure, product development, marketing campaigns, sales pipelines, and product management.
Tasso boasts more than 20 years of experience across IGT’s B2B and B2C commercial divisions. His legacy includes multi-year spells as Senior Vice President of Global Supply Chain and Services, and Senior Vice President of Global Lottery Marketing. Tasso, who also served a previous tenure as Chief Executive Officer of Northstar Lottery Group, will report directly to Brightstar CEO Vince Sadusky.
Capitalizing on iGaming and Digital Ecosystem Expansion
The executive restructuring transpires exactly four weeks after Brightstar published its first-quarter financial results. For the three-month period ending March 31, the company’s baseline revenue edged up year-on-year to hit $587 million, while adjusted EBITDA surged by 15%. Speaking during the quarterly earnings call, Sadusky expressed strong optimism regarding the group’s long-term commercial prospects.
While emphasizing that lottery operations remain the core backbone of the enterprise, he identified an opportunity to retain high-value users inside Brightstar’s proprietary digital ecosystem by cross-selling additional interactive gaming options directly alongside lottery purchases rather than routing player traffic to external platforms:
“As Renato prepares to step down, I want to thank him for his many years of service and steadfast commitment to our business and people. Having Marco as a part of our senior leadership team supports the company’s vision and strategic goals. As we strengthen our focus on growth, transformation and operational execution, Marco’s insights and experience will help shape the lottery operating organisation and optimise it to deliver results.”
“A lot of the growth we have had so far has been around the iLottery market and our market share. That primarily drives our success – but so does, to a lesser extent, also offering consumers the ability to play iCasino games and sports betting [on the app].”
Backed by its positive first-quarter metrics, the lottery firm formally reaffirmed its financial outlook for the full calendar year. Total revenue is projected to finish within a range of $2.50 billion and $2.55 billion, while full-year adjusted EBITDA is expected to reach between $1.16 billion and $1.19 billion.
