London Conference Week 2020 has officially kicked off at the ExCeL, five consecutive days of conference sessions, expo floor action, networking and parties. This infamous week is comprised of ICE VOX, ICE London and iGB Affiliate London, all catering to the gambling industry and likely the busiest week of the year for many in our space.
ICE VOX is a two-day series of conference tracks dedicated to senior professionals in the gambling industry, a content-driven affair commencing the anticipated week.
“We open the content on the Monday and its been a really successful move for us. As you can see there’s loads of people here today which is amazing. I think it’s a really good way to kick off the show and set the tone for the rest of the week”, shared Sadie Walters, Clarion Gaming’s Head of Production.
“Certainly there’s a lot of regulatory discussions and also I think this conversation around the perception of the industry and how to change that, how to unify and collectively come out with one voice for the gaming industry, seems to be a massive topic on the agenda today for sure”, she said.
Three separate conference tracks ran simultaneously today, World Regulatory Briefing (WrB), International Casino Conference (ICC) and Modernizing Lotteries. WrB’s topics surrounded regulation, compliance, responsible gaming and more, featuring C-level speakers such as LeoVegas Group’s CEO Gustaf Hagman.
Sweden’s newly regulated market was a big topic of discussion at WrB and LeoVegas, an operator that has enjoyed a big presence in Sweden since its inception in 2011, had to make some adjustments to stay ahead.
“For LeoVegas, it started out a little bit turbulent in the beginning of last year, but then the sky cleared and we’re doing really well”, confirmed Hagman.
“We are the clear market leader in Sweden, we are the number one brand in Sweden when it comes to online casino as well and I think the secret behind that is to have a really good compliance team working locally together with the marketing team and together with the tech compliance as well”, he said.
“So you have all those three fundamentals in place in order to get a really good customer journey but also player protection of course”, Hagman added.
Today’s IRs in Japan panel at the ICC featured Brendan Bussman of GMA, a Las Vegas-based consultant with over two decades of experience in the gaming and hospitality industries.
“There’s a lot of movement happening in Japan right now, partially because of some recent events that haven’t been the most pleasant things, the scandal with 500.com and other things, but its really where operators are finally getting to dig in, get an RFP process going which will all start most probably start Q2, with the exception of Osaka which is live today”, Bussman shared.
“Then basically about a year from now, delve into the full RFP process once those are chosen for the sites, between the prefecture and the partnership they create with an operator, to try to win one of the three licenses at the central government level”, he said.
The Modernizing Lottery track focused on private vs. national lotteries, regulation, digital modernization and more, including a presentation from Julian Borg-Barthet of RISQ.
“What we’ve got is an A-rated insurance platform, so we’re able to offer up to 150 million Euros in insurance-backed jackpots”, he told CalvinAyre.com.
“Betkey is a new integrated partner of ours. Henrik Mandal, who is the CEO of Betkey, came to us with a hand-held device where he’s able to go into emerging markets where there’s high traffic areas”, he said.
“So we’ve taken that technology and his ability to be able to provide a lottery on that and we brought that to ICE because we wanted to showcase our insurance backing as well and give everybody at ICE the opportunity to win up to a million!”, Borg-Barthet revealed.
“We’ve got two people going around ICE and they are using Henrik’s machines from Betkey and they are taking lottery entries. But we didn’t want to just do that, we wanted to give something back. So we joined forces with Gambling Therapy and we’re going to take a quarter of those prizes, if anybody wins- that goes directly to the charity”, he shared.
Join us tomorrow for more coverage from London Conference week, including exclusive action and reveals straight from the ICE expo floor and iGB Affiliate London coming up later this week.
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