With Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association scheduled to resume their seasons in late July and the National Football League preseason planning to start two weeks later, the upcoming SBC Digital Summit will tackle sports betting, along with the future of igaming.
The online conference will take place on July 14-16 and is hosted by BC Events, also the organizer of the Betting on Sports America trade show in New Jersey that’s been pushed back to Dec. 1-3. The Digital Summit comes as team sports are starting to make a comeback from their COVID-19 postponement. When SBC held a digital summit in April with more of a European focus, ping pong, eSports and Belarussian football were the main betting options at the time and Korean baseball and German football were about to begin.
Whether American sports can resume and how long they can keep going amid the pandemic are questions that will linger throughout the summer and will be addressed during the summit.
The virtual conference will focus on regulation, online betting and gaming, the land-based industry, sports and innovation, the future of tribal and Canadian sports betting, and cashless payment systems over the three days. It will also feature one-on-one interviews with industry leaders, panel discussions, chat features, and themed networking sessions.
“People still want to do business and, ironically, we’ve been reopening casinos with 20 states having legal sports betting (but not many sports),” said Sue Schneider, vice president of growth and strategy with SBC. “It’s been a strange time, but on the flip side, there’s been online gaming where it’s been legal that’s growing (in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware). We’re going to be seeing states that legalized sports betting and are comfortable with mobile looking at adding casino games and other products.”
A panel discussion on a regulatory roundup of sports betting and gaming features Joshua Pearl, director of sports operations for Penn National Gaming, Becca Giden, senior analyst with EK Gaming, John Pappas, founder and CEO of Corridor Consulting and Stacie Stern, director of government affairs with FanDuel.
Among the 75 speakers at the conference are plenty of big names, including Jay Snowden, president and CEO of Penn National Gaming.
ESPN sports betting reporter David Purdum will interview legendary Las Vegas oddsmaker Roxy Roxborough.
Paris Smith, CEO of sportsbook Pinnacle, Bryan Bennett, COO of Betfred USA Sports and Edward Moed, CEO of HPL Digital Sports will participate in panels on the new sports and betting outlook prompted by COVID-19.
Another panel, featuring Jennifer Saragnese, director of retail development for Pointsbet, Seth Schorr, CEO of Fifth Street Gaming, and Sam Basille, general manager of PinPoint – GeoComply, will discuss the next generation of betting venues such as sports bars and stadiums.
Even sports leagues will participate in the conference, with Scott Kaufman-Ross, a vice president and head of fantasy and gaming for the NBA, Brian Carroll, senior vice president of global media distribution with the LPGA, and David Miller, vice president and assistant general counsel of the PGA Tour. They will talk about how the leagues are adapting during the pandemic.
Charles Gillespie, CEO of Gambling.com, John Levy, CEO of theScore, Brian Musburger, CEO of the Vegas Stats Information & Network and Daniel Kustelski, founder of Chalkline Sports will talk about how sports-media outlets are positioning themselves to take advantage of the nationwide expansion of sports betting, which could see as many as 40 states legalize it by 2024.
Erika Nardini, CEO of Barstool Sports, will talk about the sale of a portion of her business to Penn National Gaming, what the deal means to the company and the intersection of sports media and gambling.
In a session on the landscape around sports sponsorship, the speakers include Kyle Wachtel, head of partnerships with Roar Digital, Dean Akinjobi, CEO of Footballmedia, Adam Davis, Chief Commercial Officer with HB Sports & Entertainment, and Dustin Gouker, head of content for Catena Media.
Allain Roy, president and CEO of RSG Hockey, will talk about how rights holders are adapting to sports betting.
The conference will also delve into coping with COVID-19 and how to do business during a pandemic and deal with health and safety.
The summit, like its earlier version in April, will also have a virtual exhibition.
“This is not your father’s trade show,” Schneider said. “There are a million webinars, so people are fairly comfortable with the conference part of it. But this has the trade-show part, where you go to a booth and converse with people there, plus do networking with Zoom calls where you have hosts and guests stimulate the discussion. We wanted to do something that covered all three of those areas and be a gathering place. One of the things we have found was that people have been cooped up and not really seeing their peers they work with. I think there’s a real appetite to reach out to folks. That’s the real intent.”
Individual delegate passes are available for $49. Company passes are also available for group discount rates of $350 (for 10 passes), $500 (for 25 passes) and $1,000 (for 100 passes).
To register, go to https://sbcevents.com/sbc-digital-summit-north-america/tickets/
