In what’s being dubbed “the world’s largest online event in gaming,” SBC Events will host a groundbreaking interactive virtual conference and exhibition, which will not only focus on the challenges and opportunities created by COVID-19’s global disruption to the industry, but also look beyond the pandemic.
The SBC Digital Summit will run five days from April 27th to May 1st and include expert panels covering sports betting, online casinos and slots, opportunities in Latin America (including two sessions in Spanish with English subtitles on replay), lotteries, payments, and digital marketing. More than 10,000 people from around the world are expected to participate.
The conference will feature a line-up of more than 140 big-name speakers from the global betting and gaming sector, including Carsten Koerl, CEO and founder, of Sportradar, Jesper Svensson CEO of Betsson Group, and Paris Smith CEO of Pinnacle.
Click here to view full conference agenda.
“The Digital Summit is an opportunity for all of us to get together and work our way through this, with some of the best minds in the industry sharing their perspective,” said SBC Managing Director Andrew McCarron. “There’s never been a more important time to put something like this on.”
McCarron said the impetus for the summit came from conversations with CEOs and other executives—and the groundswell of people wanting to share their experiences and talk about how they’re dealing with COVID-19. The conference also gives the industry something to focus on that makes people feel something is happening.
“People are going off in one direction, not knowing if that’s the direction to go and not knowing what somebody else is doing,” McCarron said. “The rules are out the window. We realized more than ever that people needed to share their experiences and pull together.”
It’s much more than an online conference, McCarron said. There will be a virtual networking lounge where delegates can catch up with existing contacts and meet new ones, either via one-on-one or group chats. A virtual exhibition floor will host up to 50 spaces and a virtual media lounge will make available industry digital publications for delegates, he said.
“We have a successful webinar series, but we felt it needed to be something more—a reason for a collective experience for the gambling industry, while everyone is stuck at home or working remotely,” McCarron said. “People want interaction. They still need to make connections and network. If we had just done web streaming, it wouldn’t quite feel like something SBC does. We feel now is the time. People need this interaction now.”
The sessions are new concepts to reflect today’s reality and useful in a post-COVID-19 environment, McCarron said. Previous discussions at conferences “are completely out the window and not relevant,” he added.
“There’s a different starting point for everyone,” McCarron said. “It’s almost like a resetting of sports betting in the U.S. What is the new reality? People are coming up with great ideas and we’re adding extra sessions. There’s a concentration on CEOs, who make up 16 of the 18 speakers on the first day.”
Here is the list of sessions.
COVID-19 is likely to come up in every session. McCarron tried to create sessions that didn’t mention it, but that felt flippant.
“Things might change in three weeks’ time, but at the moment when we’re still in the heart of it and a record number of people are dying, it has changed everything,” McCarron said. “It’s hard to write a session without referencing it. But there’s a recognition that business will go on once this is finished, whether it’s the same or a whole other way of looking at it.”
McCarron said people’s behavior might change being shuttered at home. How the industry fares, however, will depend on the rest of the economy and how much money people have for recreational spending.
“It may be a harder time, but the gambling industry has tended to be resilient during recessions,” said McCarron who talked about changes in future staffing levels.
“I keep hearing the phrase, ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste,’” McCarron said. “It’s a chance for businesspeople to reevaluate how they have been running the business and what is necessary and important. Stuff on the fringes may not survive afterward, because they realize it’s not that important.”
McCarron said SBC made a large investment in the software to put on the digital event, which will have the feel of a conference where attendees walk into a hotel lobby. People can click on the conference, exhibition space and networking area.
The conference room has a list of sessions, replays of those that people missed and a link to download brochures. Attendees can email questions to the moderators.
“There’s also a chat room with a list of everyone in there, and you can start a discussion of what was seen in the conference room,” McCarron said. “You can search for a company and find out who is there to talk with or even arrange a Skype call.
“The audience has a chance to be exponentially bigger, which can improve chances of making a good connection,” McCarron said. “We’re doing a digital spin of what we would do in a normal event. We have a lobby of a building for navigation for no reason other than familiarity of how you do it at a physical event.”
McCarron said he expects a large attendance, given that people can participate from anywhere. “It should be of interest to everyone in the gambling industry at all levels.”
Day tickets are $54 and a ticket for the week is $105. Companies can buy group tickets at 10 for $275. It’s $550 for a group of 25 and $1,100 for a group of 100. For more information, https://sbcevents.com/sbc-digital-summit/
