CasinoRange Goes to ICE London

After a lengthy hiatus, ICE is back – it had been two years, and we at CasinoRange are so happy to be back at Excel London with it! For the first time since the COVID-19 epidemic, ICE London, the world’s largest gathering of gaming operators, brought over 35,000+ visitors from 116 countries from April 12th to 14th, 2022. At the event, attendees were able to learn about the latest gaming advances from over 550 industry exhibitors. In addition, after a similar break, iGB Affiliate (LAC) has returned to host 5,000+ affiliates and 120+ suppliers. The presentation included professionals from a variety of businesses, including casinos, fantasy sports, social gaming, esports, sports betting, and more. The event, which brought together iGaming affiliates and operators, promotes the ever-expanding markets to network and discover new ways to attract and create visitors. Read on to find out more about CasinoRange’s trip to ICE London.

Our ICE Experience

Both ICE and LAC were packed with hundreds of booths from leading iGaming industries; while easy to navigate, there was so much to see and do that attending was definitely important for us. The booths were spread around the whole conference centre, with plenty of interactive and attention-grabbing attractions. Among many others, these included Novibet’s giant prize wheel spin, BigFaFa’s Crystal Maze-esque cage with Cryptocurrency prizes, even robots from two separate companies BetConstruct and SoftGamings! There were also many free product demonstrations for numerous casino and slot games. Others successfully captured the crowds’ attention with fun games and competitions, including Dance Dance Revolution and mini-golf from Clubhouse MMG or (very successfully) lured in the masses with free bars – all with their own unique theme or design.

We also spoke to a few esports related booths about the potential for esports betting in the UK and US. One of the content team’s most unique experiences was taking a tour of the eyecatching Allied Esports Truck, which was essentially a whole esports tournament on wheels. With exciting emerging options for esports tournaments, we believe esports betting will continue to become more accessible and engaging for esports and betting enthusiasts alike. To top things off, there were a few booths that highlighted emerging trends and industries such as NFTs, crypto, esports and how iGaming may interact with the metaverse. Finally, there were lots of freebies which we rather shamelessly took as many of as we could!

iGB Learn

IGB Learn was a section where affiliates could attend informative and often cutting edge industry talks to improve their business practices. Read on for what we managed to take away!

Former Google engineer Fili Wiese revealed some search engine optimisation (SEO) tricks of the trade that can help optimise websites for indexing and help Google bot crawl affiliate websites more effectively. If that’s all gibberish to you, the end result is that we reaffirmed or learned some new ways of making CasinoRange’s content more visible on Google! 

The US CEO Panel featured Jai Maw, President of Betting Hero, Michael Dalu CEO of Catena Media and Will Armitage, the co-founder of BestOdds. The panel discussed the ever-changing US market and the projected trends which will come of it for the iGaming industry. In addition, the panel outlined what affiliates should expect from the decrease in sportsbook marketing spending (which has been all over the news lately!). Having experts in the field to discuss the market as a whole was especially important, there was so much to discuss, so there was, unfortunately, no time for the Q&A segment. Still, there was more than enough information to digest from the overall segment. 

Another exciting talk that will likely influence CasinoRange’s future marketing strategies was the Branding and Design for Social Media Success with Steve Lee, the Creative Director of Digital Footprints. One of the trends we picked up on was the rise of social media, particularly TikTok, in the iGaming market. The increasingly fast-paced and competitive iGaming industry benefits greatly from tools that can capture attention and convey information quickly – in other words, popular social media platforms.

Slot Providers and Online Casinos

Many leading slot providers had a strong presence at the Excel Centre, including iSoftBet, Pariplay, Playson, Pragmatic Play and Red Tiger Play. It was great to put faces to names for the creators of some of the most successful online slot games on the market. One of the biggest highlights for the content team was getting in contact with InTouch Games Ltd. The company owns several of our favourite UK Casino Brands, including Casino2020, Jammy Monkey and Bonus Boss. We had a discussion with Junior Affiliate Executives Joe Lyon about their brands and how we interact with them, which we will use to maintain and improve the quality of our work and our customer’s experience! We had some fun while chatting too, receiving a few freebies and even managing to get on their slot game competition’s leaderboard, at least temporarily.

Would we go to ICE next year?

Absolutely. The content team wholeheartedly enjoyed our experience at ICE and LAC, met some of the big players in the industry face-to-face, networked with potential new customers and perhaps most importantly, we managed to learn a lot that will improve the experience for our customers and any sports bettors or online casino users they have! Events like ICE help inform the CasinoRange strategy to keep all our Slot Reviews, Casino Reviews and even our helpful How-Tos relevant and interesting to our readers. Plus we got free stuff, and who doesn’t like a free beer mat, right?

Our Personal Photos of ICE & LAC