Stern Pinball Inc.

Stern Pinball Inc. is an American pinball manufacturer based in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. Gary Stern founded the company in 1999, buying Sega's pinball division as Sega left the business, and continued a family history that runs the length of the industry: his father, Sam Stern, bought a 49-percent stake in Williams Manufacturing in 1948, ran Williams as president after its 1959 sale, and later co-founded Stern Electronics with Gary in 1977 out of the assets of Chicago Coin. Gary went on to help set up Data East's U.S. pinball division in 1986; Sega bought that division in 1994 and renamed it Sega Pinball, then sold it to Gary Stern five years later when Sega left the pinball market for good. That same year, Williams and Bally shut down their own pinball lines, leaving Stern Pinball as the industry's only major manufacturer — a position it held until Jersey Jack Pinball's arrival in the early 2010s.

The company ran its factory out of Melrose Park, Illinois — the plant dating back to the Data East and Sega years — before moving in 2015 to a larger, roughly 110,000-square-foot plant at 2001 Lunt Avenue in Elk Grove Village, then again in 2023 to a 163,875-square-foot facility on Busse Road in the same suburb. In 2009, in the middle of the recession, Stern brought in private equity backing from an affiliate of Hagerty Peterson & Co.; Peterson and Daniel Wallace joined the board while Gary Stern stayed on as chairman and CEO. Hardware kept pace with the growth: the Spike electronics system arrived in 2015, and Spike 2 followed with full-color LCD displays in the backbox, showing up in titles such as Guardians of the Galaxy in 2017. Over the years the company built its catalog around licensed titles including The Simpsons, The Lord of the Rings, AC/DC, Metallica, The Walking Dead, Star Wars, Godzilla and John Wick.

Stern launched Insider Connected in August 2021, letting players log into any connected machine with a personal QR code to track achievements and progress online. In December 2022, Gary Stern stepped down as chief executive while remaining chairman, and Seth Davis, a Disney veteran who had joined as president the year before, took over as CEO. Stern's Spike 3 platform debuted with Star Wars: Fall of the Empire in September 2025, bringing a larger 18.5-inch HD display and a new audio system, and 2026 brought Pokémon by Stern Pinball in February and Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye in May. Chicago-area business press now describes Stern as the world's largest pinball manufacturer, still turning out new licensed machines each year from its Elk Grove Village headquarters.