Light & Wonder has inaugurated Galeforce, a Bulgaria-based studio that will develop iGaming titles for EMEA markets. The move marks a notable escalation in the company's efforts to expand its international development footprint as competition in regulated online gaming markets grows more aggressive.
Key Takeaways
- Light & Wonder opened the Galeforce game development studio in Sofia to strengthen its expanding EMEA iGaming development footprint.
- The Bulgarian hub gives the company skilled EU talent, regulatory clarity and proximity to European markets.
- Galeforce will emphasize shorter production cycles, helping Light & Wonder deliver locally tailored games faster across EMEA.
Sofia has emerged as one of Europe's more attractive destinations for technology and digital entertainment investment in recent years, drawing companies that need access to a skilled workforce within a cost-competitive EU market. For Light & Wonder, grounding Galeforce there provides direct access to that talent pool while keeping operations within a jurisdiction that offers regulatory clarity and proximity to established European gaming markets.
Rob Procter, SVP of Game Design at Light & Wonder iGaming, made clear that the studio is designed to give the company the creative capacity and organizational scale needed to bring content to market more quickly across EMEA territories.
Speed is central to the Galeforce concept. The studio was built around rapid development cycles and tight collaborative workflows, with the expectation that shorter timelines from concept to deployment will help Light & Wonder stay competitive in markets where player preferences shift quickly and regionally tailored content carries real commercial weight.
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Light & Wonder CEO flags growing prediction market threat
While Light & Wonder pushes deeper into EMEA, the company is simultaneously navigating a far more complicated picture in the United States.
At the 47th annual Gaming Conference in Las Vegas in May, hosted by the Nevada Society of Certified Public Accountants at Circa Las Vegas, company president and CEO Matt Wilson delivered a candid assessment of domestic market conditions and the threats the industry faces going forward.
Wilson acknowledged that a 2022 growth plan had assumed at least three new states would legalize iGaming between that year and 2025, projecting that such expansion would push the company's EBITDA from roughly $900 million toward $1.4 billion. That state-level movement never arrived.
Only eight states currently have iGaming in place. Wilson noted, however, that politicians tend to warm to gaming expansion when governments are under fiscal pressure and that such conditions are increasingly present in multiple states, suggesting the regulatory landscape could shift.
Wilson also identified prediction markets as a fast-moving competitive threat to the gaming industry. Platforms including Kalshi and Polymarket have grown at a pace that pushed their combined market value to more than twice that of DraftKings and FanDuel.
Wilson argued the industry needs a coordinated collective response, particularly as prediction market operators explore products that structurally resemble slot machines but are structured around financial contracts. He made clear that if Nevada regulators draw a firm line against such products, Light & Wonder would follow their lead.
