IGT to shutter electronic table games division in 2027

Following an extensive round of layoffs earlier this year, slot giant International Game Technology will shut down its electronic table games division in 2027, the company confirmed to iGB Tuesday.

IGT spokesman Phill O’Shaughnessy said that the move was made “as part of our focus on core business priorities and long-term growth objectives”. He said the company “will continue to provide its ETG customers with the level of support they expect” during the transition.

The supplier, which was acquired, taken private and merged with Everi Holdings in a $6.3 billion deal under Apollo Global Management in 2024, previously cut about 10% of its global workforce in March. At that time, new CEO Hector Fernandez said in an internal memo that the layoffs were meant to “simplify our structure, reduce duplication and enable us to move with greater clarity and speed”.

IGT’s former lottery division was spun off as part of the merger, which became the publicly traded Brightstar Lottery, and ETGs appear to be next on the chopping block under Apollo. When Apollo partner Daniel Cohen went before Nevada regulators in June 2025, he bemoaned the fact that the business had fallen behind chief competitors Aristocrat and Light & Wonder. He said “long-term value creation” was his firm’s sole focus in making the deal.

“Our goal long term is to become the operator’s supplier,” Cohen told regulators. “So if you’re the Venetian or Caesars or anyone else, you can come to IGT for basically every one of your product needs, which will allow us to continue to invest in products and innovate with our customers to really create the next generation of what casino technology products will look like.”

IGT had been growing ETG business

The company’s ETG business was small compared to slots but it had been growing in recent years, including both systems and games. Its offerings included blackjack, baccarat and roulette ETGs. IGT had also expanded its famous Wheel of Fortune franchise to an ETG format, hoping to the brand would help grow the sector.

“We wanted to give a clear differentiation versus the past because this is a completely new [ETG] offering,” Luigi Cacciapuoti, IGT’s vice president of specialty product and ETG, told GGB Magazine in 2024.

“We rewrote everything. Every line of code, everything is new and we really want to offer something that at the same time would be exciting for the players and valuable for our customers. So we made sure that we are answering the needs of both.”

Overall, the ETG sector has faced challenges in its growth efforts, primarily due to the large amounts of space needed for the games on casino floors. Most slots generate more revenue than ETGs and take up far less space, which is always a difficult sacrifice for floor managers. The games are far more popular in European and Asian markets than in the US.

ETG market leader Interblock, which is also owned by private equity, was long rumoured to be an acquisition target by Aristocrat. A deal never materilised, however, due to a reported gap in price of $200 million.