What if the difference between winning and losing in business came down to how you spend your next dollar? In the gaming industry – a $250 billion global market – that question isn’t hypothetical. It’s the reality we face every day.

Hi, I'm Noga Halperin, the Chief Revenue Officer at SciPlay. At SciPlay, we’ve been creating games since 1998, and today we have close to 1,000 employees across the globe and 11 active games. 

The gaming industry is massive, and depending on who you ask, global revenue is estimated between $187 billion and $250 billion. Almost half of that comes from mobile games – the space we play in. That’s why I call this “the $250B playbook”, and here’s the kicker: growth in this industry – and in most industries today – doesn’t come from gut instinct. It comes from data.

So, let’s dive in.

The size of the game – and why it matters

When you zoom out, the gaming industry is split across platforms: console, PC, handheld, and mobile. 

Mobile has been like rocket fuel, especially during COVID, when people stuck at home turned to games in record numbers. But after that spike, the market shifted. Growth slowed. Competition exploded. And investors started demanding profit over topline revenue. Many companies that once focused on growth at any cost saw their valuations crumble.

At SciPlay, we managed to keep growing even as parts of the industry shrank. That hasn’t been easy, and it certainly hasn’t been about luck. It’s about making disciplined, data-driven decisions – over and over again.

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Why data beats instinct every time

We have millions of players logging in every day, and every action they take is a datapoint. That means we’re sitting on a mountain of information. The key is knowing how to use it to drive smarter decisions.

At SciPlay, I think about data through three main pillars:

  1. Marketing
  2. Product management and development
  3. Operations

Everything we do ladders back to the bottom line. We don’t make decisions because something “feels right.” We measure it, we model it, and we project the return before we invest. With one small exception: culture events. 

I can’t put a neat ROI number on those, but they matter for talent and team spirit. For everything else? If it’s not measurable, it doesn’t fly.

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