SBC, SiGMA, ICE: Is Bigger Always Better in the eGaming Conference Arms Race?

It seems organisers of eGaming conferences are currently engaged in a giant game of one-upmanship, the scale of which we have never seen before. If you’ve been in the industry for a while (I mean 10, 15 or more years - not the 3 that make people a "veteran" on their CVs these days), then you’ll remember how events used to be much smaller. ICE in London felt positively tiny compared to the behemoth it is now and SBC was pretty much just Rasmus Sojmark organising some drinks next to Clarion Events ’s flagship expo. Further afield in Manila, it was Rosalind Wade , Luis Pereira and me who very carefully hosted a few networking drinks (Ros and Luis via Asia Gaming Brief and with myself being “SBC Asia”) to test the waters over a decade ago (If you had drinks with us at Cova, Buddha Bar or 71 Gramercy in Makati, then you’re proper old school and I remember hand delivering invites to the various operators in beforehand). America was still a huge no-no and the Brazil-led LatAm frenzy hadn’t even started yet.

Now, things have grown and the industry has opened up the world over. The just concluded SBC Summit was massive and the team is already talking about doubling the expo in size for next year’s move to Portugal. Slightly further south-east, Eman Pulis recently announced that his flagship SiGMA Malta event has moved to an even bigger venue for this year’s edition and the Clarion guys are busy moving ICE from the big smoke to Barcelona. Over in Asia, SiGMA also managed to put on a very impressive first edition of their format at SMX in Manila and the general direction seems to be Go Big or Go Home. But how big is too big? Have we reached the point where we need to seriously ask how much bigger these events need to be and how many more we really need?

Let’s take the recent SBC Barcelona as example. Two massive exhibition halls and a festival area in between occupied more than 38,000 square meters in total. You needed really good walking shoes to make it through the two days, and that’s before you even take into account the eight stages hosting 450 speakers delivering 80 hours of talks and lectures. Then there were the parties at night, with sometimes not one but two high-end nightclubs being utilised to fit everyone in. I thought we were swanky when we hired the whole of 71 Gramercy back in the old days, but the SBC guys really took things to the next level. All of this was very well organised but a lot to take in.

I know our industry is still growing (even if you have to sometimes ask yourself how many platform providers, KYC solutions and PSPs we really need) but are ever bigger expos the way forward? I feel as if we are reaching not only a physical but also a mental limit. Physical because there are only so many stands you can walk past and so many people you can chat to in two days. A quick count indicates that there were around 330 booths at SBC Barcelona for example. Let’s say you really try to see and talk to each of them over the two days when the expo is on, that would give you less than three minutes for each of them. Granted, few of us will really do that, but you are still left with a big challenge on where to place your focus and who to see and meet with.

To combat this, event organisers are increasingly using their own apps, with mixed results. The SBC one was actually really good and the ability to scan badges and save contacts with notes was very useful. But when I used the iGB one in Amsterdam, I found it good to see who’s there but less useful to actually communicate or network as few people seemed to be actively using it. In fact, I met a few people on the show floor who I had contacted through the app before but who had never checked it or weren’t even really aware of its existence.

Conferences also cost money. To attend and to exhibit at. Even if you get in for free, you still need to fly there, book a hotel, and the time you spend doing all this also isn’t free. The commercial models behind these massive events are becoming more sophisticated and this poses big challenges to many companies in the industry. Not only are the events increasing in size, but also frequency. You could literally go to at least one every month now and businesses must decide where to spend their (often limited) marketing and travel dollars, and who will provide most bang for their bucks. This must also give organisers sleepless nights.

Maybe a return to quality over quantity is the way forward. Some companies, such as NEXT.io and AGB, seem to have followed this approach for some time now and it seems to be working for them. SBC was clever in putting on the Leader’s Summit in Barcelona and I predict we will see more events like it. In the end, we are all at these events to do business, to acquire new clients, and to look after existing ones. But there are only so many hours in the day for all of us. How we use them effectively with all these expos and conferences is the 64,000 dollar question.

(Please let me know in the article comments what you think of the current conference scene and how you decide which one to attend, what you like, and where you think this is all heading)