Light & Wonder appoints Rohan Gallagher as Global Chief Corporate Affairs Officer
Light & Wonder has appointed Rohan Gallagher as the group’s new Executive Vice President and Global Chief Corporate Affairs Officer.
Based in Sydney, Gallagher will oversee investor relations, environmental and social governance, corporate social responsibility, and global communications.
His appointment comes as Light & Wonder transitions to a sole listing on the Australian Securities Exchange, a move the company has said is a key step in its corporate restructuring.
Gallagher joins from independent investment firm Jarden Group, where he was Managing Director in the institutional equities division. He also previously held senior investor relations and corporate affairs positions at Aristocrat, Ampol, and Credit Suisse Australia.
Gallagher also has experience in the gaming sector and previously led initial institutional coverage of Light & Wonder in Australia.
His new role is expected to focus on strengthening the company’s engagement with investors and other stakeholders as it shifts its primary listing to the Australian Securities Exchange.
Gallagher said, “This is a pivotal moment for Light & Wonder, and I couldn’t be more excited to work with the team to complement the significant work that they have already done across IR, ESG, CSR, and communications.
“The company’s legacy of creating the world’s best games, coupled with its desire to further enhance stakeholder engagement, deeply align with my passions and experience. I look forward to amplifying Light & Wonder’s voice, strengthening connections with its communities, and driving meaningful change that supports L&W’s next level of growth.”
Earlier in the month, Light & Wonder became the first PAGCOR-licensed supplier in the Philippines, marking its 47th market.
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The Backstory
Setting the stage
The current development lands in an industry reshaped by leadership churn, regulatory maneuvering and platform consolidation. Across gambling, gaming and adjacent prediction markets, companies have retooled their benches and product road maps to capture growth while managing scrutiny. The pattern is clear: boards are concentrating investor relations, public affairs and product ownership under seasoned operators, while suppliers and platforms seek scale through partnerships and market entries. This backstory traces the moves that set up today’s announcement, and why they matter for market share, policy outlook and capital access over the next year.
Light & Wonder’s pivot to a single listing
Light & Wonder has been among the most active in reconfiguring its leadership to support a structural shift. The company named Rohan Gallagher executive vice president and global chief corporate affairs officer as it transitions to a sole listing on the Australian Securities Exchange. The brief spans investor relations, ESG, CSR and global communications — a signal the company wants tighter alignment between capital markets messaging and governance as it changes its primary trading venue. Gallagher brings buy-side and sell-side experience and sector familiarity, including prior institutional coverage of the company in Australia. The hire underscores the importance of a coordinated investor narrative during listing changes and portfolio simplification, and follows a string of market entries that require cross-border stakeholder engagement, including its move to become the first PAGCOR-licensed supplier in the Philippines. Read more on the appointment of Rohan Gallagher as Global Chief Corporate Affairs Officer.
Light & Wonder also consolidated product authority companywide, elevating Nathan Drane to chief product officer across the enterprise after he led the gaming segment. Centralizing game creation is a classic scale play: it reduces duplicative pipelines, unifies data-driven road maps and supports faster cross-platform deployment. It fits with the company’s push to deliver content in every market on every intended platform, a strategy that depends on consistent tooling and talent development. The shift aligns with its recent distribution expansion and online partnerships, including coordination with U.S. operators. Details on the role and strategy are in the coverage of Light & Wonder’s move that promoted Nathan Drane to chief product officer.
Distribution scale and content pipelines
Supplier reach remains the other leg of the stool. Playson’s global deal with Light & Wonder extends the developer’s titles across the United Kingdom, Canada and Latin America through a platform integrated with operators worldwide. For Light & Wonder, third-party content augments its own portfolio and helps defend market share against aggregators that tout breadth. For studios, the distribution lift can compress time to revenue, smooth out regional licensing challenges and provide a backdoor into operator deal flow. That matters as online casino competition intensifies and operators prune lobbies to favor proven performers and exclusive content. The agreement illustrates how platform scale and product centralization reinforce each other: a unified product organization can more efficiently incorporate external titles while optimizing release cadence and placement. See the specifics in Playson’s global distribution deal with Light & Wonder.
Light & Wonder’s content posture also connects to its U.S. online footprint. The company’s products went live on Penn Entertainment’s platform in Michigan on Jan. 16, part of a broader play to synchronize land-based and digital catalogs. With Drane overseeing a centralized pipeline, the company can iterate faster on omnichannel franchises, an approach that competitors are also pursuing as they chase lifetime value and cross-sell. The combination of leadership consolidation, listing strategy and distribution partnerships frames the company’s next wave of growth — and elevates execution risk if integration lags or regulatory timelines shift.
Policy muscle in sports betting
Operator strategies are shifting too, especially in Washington. FanDuel bulked up on public affairs by naming Shailagh Murray senior vice president of public affairs and Jonathan Nabavi vice president of federal affairs. Murray brings White House and higher education institutional experience, while Nabavi arrives from the NFL after leading the league’s public policy and legislative agenda before Congress and the executive branch. The hires reflect a maturing marketplace: as online betting expands, federal touchpoints on advertising, data privacy, responsible gaming and payments have multiplied, even if most rulemaking remains at the state level. With potential federal inquiries into consumer protections and college partnerships, having senior voices with bipartisan credentials becomes a risk-management necessity. The company positioned the duo to drive long-term policy frameworks that support sustainable growth. The details are in FanDuel’s hires of Shailagh Murray and Jonathan Nabavi.
The public affairs emphasis dovetails with industry priorities: harmonizing standards, preventing a patchwork of contradictory rules and shaping advertising norms before crisis-driven restrictions arrive. It also suggests operators expect heightened oversight during an election cycle and after high-profile enforcement actions. The presence of a former NFL policy lead points to ongoing coordination with leagues on integrity, data rights and adjacent products.
Turnover and expansion among suppliers
Executive turnover at suppliers has accelerated amid expansion pushes. Games Global’s chief financial officer Tim Mickley resigned after more than four years, a period in which the company assembled a large content portfolio, acquired Microgaming’s Quickfire aggregation business and expanded into U.S. igaming by buying the B2B assets of Digital Gaming Corporation on Feb. 1, 2024. CFO departures during scale-up phases can ripple through financing plans, M&A readiness and reporting cadence, particularly for private capital-backed firms aligning toward potential liquidity events. Games Global said it has launched a search for a replacement, while the exit follows the earlier departure of its chief legal officer. The sequence underscores the strain of rapid integration and jurisdictional growth on corporate functions. Further context is in the report on the resignation of Games Global CFO Tim Mickley.
Supplier competition remains intense. Aggregators tout proprietary pipelines alongside partner studios, while operators scrutinize cost, performance and compliance. Leadership stability and clarity on capital allocation are likely to weigh on contract renewal cycles and on the ability to compete for exclusive launches. For investors, the read-through is simple: execution risk rises during leadership transitions, but so can optionality if new finance chiefs recalibrate strategy.
Prediction markets edge toward the mainstream
Outside traditional sportsbooks and casino suppliers, regulated prediction markets are testing the limits of product innovation. Kalshi hired former American Gaming Association executive Sara Slane as head of corporate development after the platform began listing sports event contracts tied to outcomes like the Super Bowl and March Madness. Slane previously helped drive the industry’s successful challenge to the federal sports betting ban and later advised operators, giving Kalshi a policy-savvy operator to navigate contested terrain. The move comes as several states, including Illinois, Ohio, Maryland and Nevada, issued cease-and-desist letters over the sports contracts. Kalshi argues it operates as a financial exchange under CFTC oversight and will follow that regulator’s lead. The clash highlights the blurred lines between financial hedging and wagering, an area likely to draw more attention as platforms experiment with event-linked instruments. Read more about Kalshi’s hire of Sara Slane.
The stakes are high. If prediction markets win broader acceptance, operators could face a new class of competitors for wallet share and price discovery around sports and macro events. If regulators clamp down, innovation may shift toward synthetic markets within existing betting frameworks. Either way, policy expertise and cross-market compliance will remain central — a through line across the executive moves shaping the sector today.
