Scientific Games was recognized with three prestigious honors in the 23rd Annual American Business Awards. The global lottery company won two Gold ABA awards for its retail technology, SCiQ and PlayCentral Powered by SCiQ, in the Operations Management Solutions and Emerging Technology categories, respectively. Scientific Games’ recently retired VP, Instant Game Production, Joe Bennett, earned a Silver ABA Award for Achievement in Management—Manufacturing, recognizing his career contributions in secure lottery instant game production.

Scientific Games President, Americas & Global Instant Products, John Schulz, said: “It’s an incredible honor to have SCiQ and PlayCentral Powered by SCiQ recognized with 2025 Gold American Business Awards. These awards reflect the strength of our innovation and the dedication of our teams to modernizing the retail lottery experience. We’re also deeply proud of Joe Bennett’s Silver Award. Joe’s leadership across three decades has helped define secure instant game manufacturing for Scientific Games and the industry during his tenure.”

This year, more than 3700 nominations from organizations of all sizes and industries were submitted to the ABAs. Winners were scored by more than 300 professionals worldwide during a rigorous judging process evaluating innovation, integrity, effectiveness, creativity, and growth. The Gold Award represents the highest honor in each category, reserved for the top-scoring entry, with the Silver Award representing the second-highest honor. The ABAs are nicknamed “Stevies” for the Greek word meaning “crowned”.

SCiQ is Scientific Games’ groundbreaking ecosystem designed to transform lottery instant game retailing. It brings advanced inventory management, security, and real-time sales tracking to retail locations, providing retailers, lotteries, and players with a smarter, more secure way to sell and purchase instant games. PlayCentral Powered by SCiQ extends the SCiQ ecosystem to lottery self-service retail environments. Integrating SCiQ technology into PlayCentral HD self-service vending machines allows for unprecedented inventory control, improved game security, and seamless retail operations, enhancing the player experience while optimizing lottery revenues.

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Over his 34-year career at Scientific Games, Joe Bennett has driven significant advancements in digital transformation, manufacturing efficiency, and security innovation. He led the transition to a fully integrated digital production ecosystem and introduced patented encryption technologies that protect the integrity of instant lottery games. Under his leadership, Scientific Games now produces more than 53 billion secure, high-quality instant games annually. Bennett retired from the company in April 2025.

Scientific Games has announced that it will continue the successful Scratch-Offs partnership with the Florida Lottery that has helped propel the Lottery to one of the top five performing instant game lotteries in the world (La Fleur’s 2024 World Lottery Almanac). The Florida Lottery will continue the Scientific Games Enhanced Partnership program for three additional years to drive sales performance and increase profits to fund education for Florida’s public schools, colleges, and universities, as well as the state’s Bright Futures Scholarship Program.

The Scientific Games Enhanced Partnership program will continue to provide the Florida Lottery with a robust assortment of products and services, including real-time analytics and insights, portfolio management and game planning, licensed brand services, advanced logistics, retail optimization, and second chance programs. Serving more than 13,500 retailers statewide, Scientific Games operates from its Orlando facility, utilizing the powerful SciTrak Ultra suite—an industry-leading instant game management solution.

John F. Davis, Florida Lottery Secretary, said: “Our mission is to maximize revenues for the enhancement of public education in Florida, which have totaled more than $48 billion thus far. Since 1997, we’ve helped send more than one million Florida students to college on a Bright Futures Scholarship. By extending our Scratch-Off games partnership with Scientific Games, we will continue to put our students’ dreams of higher education within reach.”

The Scientific Games Enhanced Partnership program is used by more than 20 lotteries, including five of the top six performing instant game lotteries worldwide. SGEP drove 31% better performance for U.S. lotteries utilizing the program in fiscal year 2023-24 (MAP weekly per capita sales).

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John Schulz, President Americas and Global Instant Products for Scientific Games, said: “The Florida Lottery’s partnership and collaboration with Scientific Games has resulted in Scratch-Off performance that is consistently among the best in the world. We’re very proud that our work together has continually improved instant game profits to benefit education in Florida.”

Scientific Games has been selected as the New Mexico Lottery’s full-line provider, winning a new, 10-year contract for gaming systems technology and expanding the global lottery company’s previous contract for New Mexico Lottery Scratchers to the Scientific Games Enhanced Partnership program. The company is the fastest-growing government-regulated lottery gaming systems provider in the world, highlighted by recent systems contract wins in the U.S. and Europe.

David Barden, CEO of the New Mexico Lottery, said, “Following a rigorous competitive procurement process, we are delighted to announce Scientific Games as the New Mexico Lottery’s new full-line provider. This strategic partnership will see Scientific Games become our exclusive lottery systems technology partner and expand our existing Scratchers relationship to a full SGEP arrangement. By implementing a single, holistic solution across our entire lottery operations, we aim to optimize performance and generate increased scholarship funding for New Mexico students.”

With a focus on strategic planning across all product lines, Scientific Games will provide the New Mexico Lottery with the company’s Momentum ecosystem, featuring the advanced AEGIS central gaming system, SciTrak instant game system and Infuse business intelligence platform. Scientific Games’ WAVE X point-of-sale retailer terminals and PlayCentral suite of self-service machines across its network of 1,000+ retailers will help engage New Mexico Lottery players with expanded game content.

John Schulz, President of Americas & Global Instant Products for Scientific Games, said, “We have partnered with the New Mexico Lottery on the instant game portion of their business for many years and are looking forward to helping take their performance to new heights as a full-line provider in a new collaborative contract. The Lottery has always taken an innovative approach to Scratchers. As the systems technology provider, we look forward to innovating its full-line business with our full ecosystem of advanced solutions to drive responsible growth.”

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The SGEP program will provide the New Mexico Lottery with Scratchers portfolio management and game planning services, data analytics, advanced logistics, licensed brand services, and retail sales and marketing support. Used by more than 20 lotteries, including five of the top six performing instant game lotteries worldwide, the program drove 31% better performance for U.S. partners in fiscal year 2023-24.

The company also provides the New Mexico Lottery with licensed properties such as GAME OF THRONES and LOTERIA. The Lottery will be supported in Albuquerque by a Scientific Games team of game, product and technology experts, along with the company’s state-of-the-art facilities and logistics services.