“ICE is always an incredible experience. This one just seems even better. There’s always a buzz but this year it seems a little bit “buzzier”, I cannot find better words, with a lot of happy people, which obviously is our aim. There are a large number of people here which isn’t as important for us as the experience for them. As long as they enjoy it, and the business and the things get done, then we are happy”, Stone affirmed.
When asked about the number of visitors, he said: “We don’t actually have the number of visitors yet, but we’ve had 7 years of growth I believe, and everyone is looking positive this year, so we are delighted about that. Obviously we will have numbers shortly.”
He then commented the highlights of the show: “There’s so much going on! I mean, every day there is something new. We have ICE Vox, which is the content element, the intelligence part. We have a full week of events, and we have 120 speakers in there, and we have different spaces, and that’s primarily to get better engagements, to give people an active experience, not the same old conferences people might be used to, and that works phenomenally well. We have a debating area, we have a boardroom area, we give options for people to book in meetings with speakers, to have one-on-one conversations with them, which is fantastic. But that’s just one part of it. If you look at ICE, we have been phenomenally supported by our partners.”
He then talked about the structured feedback approach that the organization has. “It takes place within the two weeks after the event, we go out to attend in visitors, also our customers, exhibitors and sponsors, and also delegates at the ICE conferences series, because we understand that their views are quite different. We are already in the process to doing that, and that will shed light on their experiences. We haven’t spoken to all three types of participants, but we can say it was amazing and positive. We usually have very positive conversations but one or two will raise a point on the development, and that’s quite beneficial for us because it means we’ve identified something which we can approve on for next year. So I guess unfortunately I’ll not come across any negative things this year, which is good in a way, it’s fantastic. This year we have a fantastic feedback on social media, and the nice comments we receive.”
ICE London 2020 will take place February 4-6. And the ICE Vox Conference series starts on Monday. Same location, EXCEL London UK.
“Next Clarion show will be ICE North America. We want to take the show to the next level. We spoke a lot with the industry and we thought that there may be something here. ICE is a very well established brand, is well-known, its home is here in London, but we need to do that the market wants us to do, of course, we serve the market, so ICE North America started as ICE Sportsbetting USA, which showed us that the market is ready for ICE North America, so we’ve evolved in not just in sportsbetting, of course, and it is very important at the moment, and is held in Boston. We also have a lot of support from our partners, which is fantastic, and also from visitors. We are very much looking forward to that, next May 13-15. And ICE Africa as well, of course, in October. IGB Live is another huge event in the i-gaming space, in July 16-19, in Amsterdam, Juegos Miami, Brazilian Gaming Congress, etc,” he concluded.
