IGT’s 700 Layoffs Are Not About Jobs. They Are About What Apollo Bought.
IGT's 700 Layoffs Are Not About Jobs. They Are About What Apollo Bought.
IGT’s 700 layoffs are the opening move of an Apollo private equity playbook that will reshape the slot manufacturer.
Two months ago, IGT CEO Hector Fernandez sent a letter to employees announcing that the company would eliminate roughly 700 jobs worldwide, about 10 percent of its workforce. The framing was local and human. The numbers were the news.
Two months on, the story looks different. The layoffs were not the strategy. They were the first visible step in a leveraged buyout playbook that has been running on a tight schedule since Apollo Global Management closed its $6.3 billion acquisition of IGT Gaming and Everi in July 2025. Understanding what Apollo actually bought, and what private equity ownership tends to do to a company in the first eighteen months, makes the layoff announcement read less like a workforce decision and more like the opening of a much larger transformation.
What Apollo Actually Bought
The deal that closed last July was unusual even by gaming industry standards. Apollo paid roughly $4.05 billion in cash for IGT’s gaming and digital business, which the parent company spun out of its Italian lottery operations. Simultaneously, Apollo acquired Everi Holdings, a publicly traded casino financial technology and slot manufacturer, in an all-cash deal that paid Everi shareholders a 56 percent premium over the company’s pre-announcement price. The two businesses were merged into a single privately held company headquartered in Las Vegas, retaining the IGT name.
The financing structure matters really matters, here. Apollo Fund 10 invested $1.3 billion of equity, raised another $820 million from co-investors, and accepted $275 million from the De Agostini family, the longtime IGT lottery shareholders. The remaining $4.3 billion came from debt raised in the weeks before the deal closed. That debt now sits on the new IGT balance sheet, and it must be serviced regardless of what happens to slot-floor performance over the next several years.
This is the standard architecture of a private equity acquisition. The fund puts up roughly a third of the purchase price. The acquired company carries the rest as debt. Cash flow then becomes the most important number in the building.
The Playbook the Layoffs Reveal
Private equity buyouts run on a recognizable timeline. In the first six months after close, the new ownership conducts a comprehensive review of the business. In the following twelve months, the fund executes on the findings. Cost reductions come first because they produce the fastest visible improvement in EBITDA. Reorganizations follow. Strategic repositioning takes longer.
IGT is now nine months past the Apollo close. Fernandez was named CEO five months after the deal was announced. However, his Aristocrat non-compete kept him out of the building for an additional year. He officially started in December 2025. Three months later, the 700-person reduction was announced. In a subsequent interview with GGRAsia, Fernandez described the layoffs as part of “restructuring a couple of months ago to really drive home that integration and find the cash.” That phrase, “find the cash,” is the operative language for the entire post-acquisition period.
Fernandez has also been explicit about Apollo’s instructions. In the same interview, he said Apollo told him to “build something for the next 10 years, something that’s sustainable.” He spends only about 10 percent of his time on M&A discussions because, in his words, “my investor is Apollo. My board is Apollo.” The structure means the operational restructuring and the strategic vision can move at the same time, without the quarterly earnings pressure that publicly traded competitors face.
Why the Industry Is Watching This Specifically
The slot manufacturing landscape produced two major strategic moves in the last 24 months. Aristocrat Leisure has spent the period executing an aggressive build-and-buy strategy as a publicly traded company, acquiring NeoGames for $1.2 billion, integrating Awager, and recently refinancing $1.85 billion in debt to fund further M&A. Light & Wonder has remained public and continued to grow organically. IGT, by contrast, has gone in the opposite direction. The company has left the public markets entirely, taken on substantial leverage, and is now executing a structural transformation in private.
The implications for the industry are not subtle. Apollo’s published thesis on the IGT acquisition, as described by partner Daniel Cohen at the Nevada Gaming Commission approval hearing, is that the combined company would generate $2.6 billion in revenue and $1.1 billion in EBITDA. The new structure organizes the business into three segments: Gaming, Digital, and FinTech. Independent analysis has framed the deal as Apollo buying a “data-rich platform” undervalued by public markets, with substantial upside from technology-driven transformation.
In practical terms, this means IGT under Apollo is positioned to do things that publicly traded competitors cannot. Multi-year investments in game development without quarterly earnings pressure. Aggressive AI integration across the cabinet and digital products. Restructuring expenses that public markets would punish, but private investors absorb as part of the value creation thesis. The 700 layoffs are the first visible piece of that work. They will not be the last.
What to Watch Next
The interesting question now is what Apollo does with IGT over the next two to three years. The standard private equity holding period is five to seven years, after which the fund typically exits through a public offering, a strategic sale, or a recapitalization. IGT is large enough that the eventual exit will likely be a relisting on a US exchange, which means Apollo has roughly three to five years to demonstrate the value creation thesis before the company goes back to public markets.
Three things are worth tracking specifically. First, further cost actions. The March layoffs were the largest visible move so far, but the GGRAsia interview suggests additional restructuring activity is ongoing. Second, capital expenditure on game development and technology. Apollo’s thesis depends on IGT delivering better content and better platforms than its public competitors. Third, any signals about future M&A. Fernandez said he spends only 10 percent of his time on it, but Apollo specifically buys platforms for tuck-in acquisitions, and IGT is a natural platform for that strategy.
The Review-Journal story was accurate on the day it ran. However, the framing missed the larger story by reading the layoffs as a workforce decision. They were not. They were the first of the quarterly milestones in a private equity value-creation plan that will run for the rest of the decade. The 700 people who lost their jobs are a real human cost. They are also a data point in a much larger restructuring that the industry has barely begun to watch.
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