Delegates returned to the ExCeL today by the thousands to continue their journeys throughout the ICE London expo floor. The vibe was busy and buzzing away as it always is on the Wednesday of ICE.
After enjoying a series of reveals yesterday at the show, today we dedicated our coverage to ICE exhibitors old and new, ranging from B2B suppliers to mobile first offerings, regulatory advisors and emerging market experts.
Digitain hit ICE this year in full force, flying over their team in from Armenia to host partners with an open bar, tasty treats and plenty of tables for meetings and relaxation.
“This is the 4th time we’re exhibiting at ICE, we’ve grown tremendously, our current positioning is about five times bigger than we were last year, we traveled over 50 people with our team, of course this is being powered by the partners we support in terms of the product”, Digitain’s Chief Commercial Officer Suren Khachatryan shared with CalvinAyre.com.
“We are showcasing our sportsbook as a fully managed solution and we also delivered API to some of our larger partners. From the new things is our site builder, which automates certain functionalities that was done by our developers previously, but now we are giving these tools to our partners who set up their websites much faster than before”, he added.
First time exhibitor Mkodo has been in the mobile industry for 18 years with a die-hard “mobile-first” approach for gaming apps and services. While once spanning across a number of different industries, Mkodo has taken a decision to zero in on gaming.
“We decided its time to focus completely on this industry, we work in betting and gaming, so sports book, bingo, casino, lottery”, explained Sue Yoxall, Executive Director and Co-Founder of Mkodo.
“It was time to tell everybody what we do, because we make world-class apps and digital user experiences in this market and we’d like people to know that now, so hence the booth for the first time but we are very proud to have gotten to this point of having what you see around you here”, she said.
The emerging Latin America market is of great interest to the gaming industry and has been a hot topic of discussion here at ICE London 2019. Join Games has worked hard to build relationships and even friendships with the operators and regulators in this region, allowing for coveted partnerships to be made.
“I think that Latin America is the next market, its growing very fast, we are focused at the moment in Columbia, that is a very attractive market, we have 84% of the market that are already integrated with us and in a couple of weeks we are very happy that our poker platform will be the first regulated and first network available in Columbia”, shared Luigi Spina, CEO of Join Games.
“We are trying to the same work in other countries that are soon to be regulated like Peru and Argentina, but we want to be the biggest aggregator platform in Latin America”, he added.
Over on the iGaming side of the expo floor, we came across the huge Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) display and just beside it, BDO, an advisory service for gaming and blockchain businesses wishing to set up in Malta. BDO CEO Mark Attard is passionate about Malta as an ideal jurisdiction to base an iGaming business and he sees a bright future for Blockchain businesses on the island as well.
“Still I think we’re in [blockchain’s] infancy, we’re still at the very start of it, definitely there are areas we can improve on, we’ve seen a lot of hype over it in the past few months- we’re still seeing- and I really think once we develop it a little bit further and more of the industry really gets to know what its all about, we’ll see much more turnaround there”, he explained.
Attard also sees a bright future for the intersection of iGaming and Blockchain, a sweet spot Malta has set itself up perfectly for.
“Definitely the two will interact, not just from a client point of view, we see many clients who do both a part of the iGaming industry and also on the blockchain side, but I think also from the services eventually we will see cryptocurrencies come as part of a means of payment for which we are already seeing, into our gaming clients”, Attard added.
