Last week, the sales and marketing team were delighted to welcome the return of live events, attending Malta’s first live event of 2021, which kicked off in Valletta, iGaming Next. It was a warm welcome to move one step closer to normality post-Covid, finally shifting the Zoom and video calls to face to face meetings.
The comeback of live events was also the main theme of the conference, allowing for industry-leading iGaming businesses to come together to share learnings and discuss the current and future direction of the industry.
As industry experts, we had not one but two speakers participating in panels on both days of the event, Martin Collins (Director of Sales and Business Development) took part in the panel ‘Dissecting the dynamic US M&A activity discussing the unknown landscape in the US and debating on how big the opportunities are, along with the importance of seizing the opportunities in the US market as quickly as possible. We are happy to report that the panel attracted around 500 people and was very well received.
Next up, we had Claudio Caruana, our general counsel speaking on the panel’ Ensuring a progressive regulatory revolution’, debating on if regulation really is a hindrance to pace and if so, is that a bad thing? A few of the main takeaways were that each country has their own completely different regulations, that the regulators are not in touch with the operators and that there is a lack of communication between the two, something that does need to be better aligned for the future.
Overall, despite iGaming Next being a conference of a smaller scale the attendance during the total 28 presentations and panel discussions was high, including a variety of topics from product launches, regulations, new markets, to interviews with CEO’s.
Top Panel Highlights from iGaming Next
First up is from one of the first panels at the conference: ‘Ready Player ONE: Re-engineering or inventing new games of the future?’ addressed the increased competition in combination with a younger audience with less patience and higher expectations. The panel highlighted the importance of innovative content and personalised promotions through the help of behavioral analytic tools to provide a seamless customer journey and optimisation of products. This panel really set the tone of the overall theme of personalisation and customisation as the future of the industry.
Next on our list of highlights was ‘Fast Track’s Big Reveal: How your players’ experience will change forever’ had a very strong presentation by Simon Lidzén highlighting that traditional CRM systems are designed to target one particular group with one campaign. Nevertheless, ‘Fast Track’ will make it possible to tailor a unique engagement for each customer through their CRM and tracking system, grouping the customers to a segment through checking characteristics and targeting those specifics. As one of our Marketplace partners GiG is happy to congratulate Fast Track on their successful launch of their new self-learning platform with the ‘The Singularity Model’ a new engine designed for building 1:1 experiences, ‘The Data Studio’ their new analytics platform for real-time data mining, and ‘The Singularity Project’ a hub for player engagement and iGaming CRM.
‘Up close and personal with the new style of CEO’ was another favorite including Maarja Pӓrt from the Yolo Group, Jesper Svensson from Betsson Group, David Flynn from Glitnor Group and Michael Daly from Catena Media revealing the challenges, pros and cons of carrying the title CEO. This informal panel was a nice appreciated element to the conference, letting the audience engage into who they are as persons behind their titles and businesses.
Last but not least, a huge shout out and congratulations to Pierre and the team at iGaming Next for organising such a professional and fun event. Everything from the venue, quality of content and speakers to the professionalism of the ‘Livestream’ which allowed our colleagues in Spain, Denmark and Latvia, who were not able to travel to the event, to watch it all live. And, huge congratulations to our Senior Legal Counsel, Francesca Psaila, who won the award for ‘Compliance and Regulated Markets Idol of the Year’, at iGaming Idol.
We look forward to next year’s iGaming Next and until then next up is Sigma in November and SBC North America in December.
Anna Glowacki, Sales and Marketing Analyst
