Betting on Football 2017 – “The year’s premier sports betting trade event”

ling Insider chats to SBC’s Andy McCarron, who explains why this year’s Betting on Football Conference line up is the most exciting yet.

What’s new for 2017?

Where to start? Last year was the third Betting on Football Conference, a one day conference with one track and a room for exhibitors, but it has since exploded. The floor space has more than doubled in size, and we are running the conference across two days, with two conference tracks on each day. The amount of conference content has gone up by a factor of four, the number of exhibitors has gone up by a factor of three, while each day ends with a huge networking party. In short, this year the conference has been completely transformed.

Who will be attending, and what are this year’s conference highlights?

Last year we had 50 speakers, if that, while this year we have 140. We have people coming from all over the world. Among the highlights would be our betting leaders panel – we have the CEO of Fortuna, Per Widerström, speaking there, and it promises to be a very interesting panel on the outlook for sports betting moving forward.

We also have a panel on new brands, and the new companies looking to come into the industry and make a mark. Representatives from BetStars and EnergyBet, among others, will be weighing in how new brands can penetrate this market, in which scale and marketing expertise seems to matter so much.

Another panel that I think will be very interesting is on investment, with there being so much consolidation in the market. Marek Šmrhsa of Penta Investments will be on the panel, as will Shay Segev, COO of GVC Holdings, who have obviously been very active in the M&A side of the business and are one of the industry’s stand out brands in that regard. Christian Edler, Founder of Dreamworx Online will also be there – it will be a fascinating panel to see where the money is looking, as opposed to the customers, and it should be a fruitful panel for many people.

On the second day we have a trading and operations track, with one of the sessions offering an assessment of what the trading floor will look like in five years time. Representatives from Betradar and Danske Spil will be on the panel. Later on that day John O’Reilly, a Non-Executive Director at William Hill will be featuring as a keynote speaker, one of the few people to have worked for William Hill, Ladbrokes and Coral, sharing some insights from his 25-year career. That will be a fascinating look at how the industry has changed from a director’s perspective.

What does hosting the event at Stamford Bridge bring to the conference?

People love a stadium! It’s something we always try to do with Betting on Football, in an effort to have it stand out from the traditional conference experience. It’s a natural fit. We have held the conference at Stamford Bridge for three of the last four years, and they have been very supportive in helping us build the event. We also held our SBC Awards at their exclusive Under the Bridge Nightclub. We do quite a lot with Chelsea - having a football conference in a football stadium is common sense, and a good way of cementing the relationship between betting and football.

This year will have a session exploring opportunities in the CIS – what was the thinking behind offering this session?

Funnily enough, at SBC we get asked an awful lot about Eastern Europe and CIS. We’ve worked closely with a sister company called Oddslife, with whom we’ve shared an office in Ukraine. We have a lot of good contacts in the area, and as those countries start to regulate it’s becoming a much clearer proposition for operators to invest in. It’s something we have received a lot of interest in, and a panel that we have six experts on.

We also have a spin-off breakout session specifically covering Georgia, given that Georgia is such an interesting part of the picture for the industry in that part of the world. It is building a reputation as a hub for the regulated industry in the region, and is proving very attractive given the certainty and maturity of its regulatory approach.

Can you expand on the networking opportunities on offer?

The networking events are something we have really invested in this year. SBC began life as a networking party organiser for the sports betting community. When I came on board we professionalised our offering to also focus on conferences, but we wanted to retain that ability to stage networking events.

On the first night we have hired out Kensington Roof Gardens, a beautiful, exclusive space in West London. In that space we will also have two exclusive dinners, one for affiliates and the other for C level executives, before the space merges for everyone to network. Networking is such a big part of conferences these days, and the feedback we receive is very important to us. Kensington Gardens is a premium space for this kind of event, presenting a great opportunity to catch up in a relaxed environment and digest the day’s events.

On the second day we’re staying on site. The main party is in the Under the Bridge Nightclub, which is not open to the public, having been laid out specifically for Roman Abramovic’s personal use.

We are also introducing a mobile app to aid networking this year. We have invested an awful lot in making this the year’s premier sports betting event, and the market is responding to that. There has never been a betting trade event quite like this.