Achieving Excellence

Gavin Isaacs may be one of our People to Watch for 2025, but the fact is, the longtime executive has been someone to watch for decades. He is among the best known and most highly regarded executives in the business.

Isaacs has been in the thick of the industry since 1998, when, after 12 years as a solicitor in Australia, he joined Aristocrat, eventually becoming president of Las Vegas-based Aristocrat Technologies. After seven years at Aristocrat, he moved to Bally Technologies, where he was chief operating officer before leaving in 2011 to become CEO of Shuffle Master, rebranded as Shuffle Entertainment before Bally successor Scientific Games acquired the company.

Isaacs rose to president and CEO of Scientific Games, leaving the CEO post in 2016 for two and a half years as vice chair of the board. He moved to the emerging online gaming market in 2019 as chairman of SBTech.

When Isaacs moved to the online gaming side, he was already an industry legend. In 2018, he was honored by the Association of Gaming Equipment Manufacturers with the Jens Halle Memorial Award Honoring Excellence in Commercial Gaming Professionalism. In 2022, he was inducted into the American Gaming Association’s Gaming Hall of Fame.

While the bulk of Isaacs’ achievements have been on the land-based side of the business, the growing iGaming market has pumped new life into his gaming career, prompting him to return to day-to-day operations in September as CEO of Entain, one of the premier global sports betting and online gaming operators.

Isaacs says he began to study the online side of the business while he was serving on the Scientific Games board. “I took a bit of time out and started thinking about what was over the horizon,” he says. “I had always been dealing globally, seeing what had happened in Europe and seeing Europe iGaming generating more demand for legalized online sports betting in America. I started looking at sports betting opportunities.”

On one Europe trip, Isaacs met SBTech founder Shalom Mackenzie, who offered him the job of chairman of the iGaming and sports betting platform supplier. “He made it very clear that he knew who I was, and he wanted me to come to America, and he wanted me to be his chairman,” Isaacs recalls. “SBTech had a very modern software-as-a-service solution for B2B sports betting.”

After 16 months, Isaacs left SBTech to join the DraftKings board, after which he was chairman of Altitude Acquisition Corporation and served in several advisory positions before becoming chairman of iGaming content supplier Games Global, the position he held when he was hired as CEO of Entain in September, the first permanent CEO since the 2023 resignation of Jette Nygaard-Andersen.

What Isaacs says he saw in Entain was a company with a stable of the greatest brands in betting. Formerly GVC Holdings, Entain owns brands including Coral, Ladbrokes, Bwin, Sportingbet, Neds, and the joint venture with MGM Resorts International in the BetMGM iGaming and sports betting brand.

“Entain’s got 40 of the best global brands,” Isaacs says, “and will be almost 100 percent regulated by early in January next year—which is great as well, because I only operate in regulated markets—so I just thought that there was a perfect match for me and the company.”

Isaacs says his first order of business as the London-based head of Entain is to provide a common strategic focus for its multitude of betting and gaming brands. “Just like many of the other companies I’ve had the benefit of turning around and running, (Entain) needed some love and attention, needed some focus on its product, needed some focus on its strategic direction, on its people,” he says. “And that’s what I love doing.”

Isaacs says Entain will launch a stream of product improvements over the coming year. “We made some very good product improvements before I got to the company this year, and I think you’re going to see further enhancements, and upgrading of the product stack will continue,” he says.

“And I think that’s vital. We want to make sure that we have as good as anyone else’s player experiences before we can then do better than that. You’ve got to catch the field before you can pass them. I love innovation, so I think that’s going to be one of the things that you’re going to see. You’re going to see improvements in the app speed and the stability, the bet profiles.”

The improvements, he says, will prepare Entain to seize the opportunities in the sector that promise to multiply in 2025.

“You’re going to see improvements in global markets across the board,” Isaacs says. “I expect to see growth across all (markets). I think the U.K. will continue to be a stellar business for us. I am very excited by the launch of Brazil on January 1. We’ve got Alberta coming online during the year as well. And in all the different areas, we will focus on continued improvement.”

How about five years down the road? “I don’t look five to 10 years down the road yet,” says Isaacs. “I’m focused on the present. This year is to make your numbers. Next year is to grow. The third year is to have everything ready to take off, and to really start the exponential growth that I’m looking for. I would like to see us have a podium position in every major market we operate in.”