ICE London 2023 hits the jackpot by welcoming 40,000 visitors to the ExCeL show
Executives at Clarion Gaming, the organisers of the London-Based iGaming trade fair ICE London 2023, are celebrating after preliminary results suggest that a record 40,000 attendees made their way to the ExCeL arena for the 2023 incarnation.
Attendance figures are subject to final auditing, but indications suggest that turnstile numbers for the annual event have easily surpassed the 36,000 industry insiders that flocked to the influential event in 2020. The last comparable year before Covid-19 restrictions did much to curtail intervening iterations.
Stuart Hunter, managing director of gambling industry middlemen Clarion Gaming, was cautious about the visitor projections saying that figures were still “subject to independent verification” but, if agreed, would suggest that this would “set a new attendance record for a show which in its original format dates back to the 1930s”.
If confirmed, record numbers suggest that the ICE London trade show and interest in the wider iGaming industry remain healthy. This was a surprise considering the significant economic headwinds that see inflation rates in the U.K. running at near-record rates of 10.1%, interest rates rising to 14-year highs of 4% and growth rates flatlining in the three months to December 2022.
However, Mr Hunter was not surprised by the uptick in visitors to the UK’s top iGaming event, adding that “these are significant numbers, and I believe they reflect the huge importance and value that visitors attach to their ICE experience.”
New record figures represent a significant change in fortune for ICE London. The 2021 renewal was cancelled as the U.K. was still experiencing crowd restrictions associated with the Covid-19 outbreak. The 2022 version, which was moved to April, was a muted affair, with attendances of 24,000 reported.
Primarily figures also gave some indication as to the direction that the industry is taking in 2023.
Of all visitors to ICE London 2023, unverified data suggests that 50% of all iGaming firms that made their way to the ExCeL were online-only operations, while the same number traded in both online and physical settings.
The breakdown of attendees by operation for the February 7 – 9 gaming jamboree also suggests that casino-based outlets are as plentiful as sports betting and payments sector outlets combined.
Over 20,000 firms focusing on slots and table games visited ICE, dwarfing the 13,000 sports betting-focused and 5,000 payments outfits that also displayed interest in the wares being promoted across the show site.
2023 might have seen a bumper crowd drawn to ICE, but 2024 promises to be even bigger.
Alluding to the year-on-year growth expected by Clarion, Hunter added that “2024 will see further expansion.” And that “more than 80%” of exhibition space in the ICE VOX educational area had already been filled up by 2023 standers. Given these promising pre-sale levels for next year, records at ICE London could be broken again.