Industry insiders who may (or may not) be fond of damp and cold weather will be converging on east London from February 2 to 4 for the world’s largest gaming show. Held in the depths of the great British winter, the aptly named ICE Totally Gaming is hoping to outdo its biggest ever event held last year, when it hosted 25,497 visitors from 133 countries.
While ICE is billed as an iGaming show, most of its exhibitors could be described as land-based. That makes it more of a general gaming show and direct competitor to the US’s premier event, Global Gaming Expo (G2E). ICE’s tilt towards the internet has followed from online gaming being widespread and well-developed in both the UK and wider Europe. In the US, by contrast, iGaming is moving slowly and is widely banned. So it’s no surprise that less than 5 percent of exhibitors at last year’s G2E were listed as iGaming operators, versus nearly 40 percent at ICE. In a recent interview ICE Marketing Director Jo Mayer said her show would feature “the very latest innovations in gaming technology” to “bring together the online and offline gaming worlds in a way that no other event does.”
Conferences during ICE will include events covering Cross Platform and Multi-Channel Gaming; Betmarkets; and Cybercrime, Security and Regulatory Compliance. Seminars will cover Women in Gaming and Millennials & Gaming. Once the show’s webinars are also included, there will be presentations on the state of the industry in Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe, as well as Brazil, Mexico, India, Colombia and US tribal reservations. The dedicated ICE 2016 app is now available for Android and iOS.