The online gaming conference proves to be a huge hit with industry participants
The inaugural day of the SBC Digital Summit was full-on high-quality content with a focus on the current situation regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. In the panel “Business continuity in the face of COVID-19,” industry leaders discussed topics about changing habits in their customers as well as promoting and enhancing the general image of the gambling industry. This interesting panel listed important names in the industry, such as George Daskalakis, CEO & Founder, Stoiximan / Betano; Tim Heath, CEO and Founder, Coingaming Group, just to name a few. Estimated participation for the first day reached into the thousands.
“I never thought in my gambling industry experience that table tennis would account for 29% of our turnover – but strange times indeed. It’s certainly a good sport for content given that it’s quick and fast and punters can understand the players who are competing,” said Heath regarding a recent change in customer’s preferences. “We’ve also seen a massive increase in eSports, and we’ve had to change our narrative and our marketing speak to try to push these different competitions.”
Heath’s comment was followed by Segev, who confirmed that for GVC, there has been a rise in people’s interest in sports that are not so widespread and are considered more of a niche, but also in gaming events. “We have seen an increase in gaming revenues, specifically Poker, which has had a huge spike and volumes back to where they were a few years ago,” he said.
Regarding the same topic, Dalaskis pointed the future towards online grounds instead of retail selling, which will reopen eventually, but it might lose some of its power. “I believe, of course, that retail will reopen, but things will not be the same for quite a while when it comes to consumer habits. We expect the shift to online to become more rapid, and we are already seeing this with our customers. There are differences in their behavior,” said Dalaskis.
The SBC Digital Summit has had a great start with high-quality content, and will run until May 1. It has seven conferences scheduled, as well as virtual exhibitions and networking lounges.
