As the much-anticipated SBC Summit Americas gets underway this week, we took a look behind the curtain of such a star-studded event and joined SBC’s VP of Conference Production, Aidan Brain, for a special episode of the iGaming Daily.
iGaming Expert: Firstly Aidan, how excited are you for the conference this week and to see all your hard work pay off?
Aidan Brain: Well, that’s it. Exactly. That’s one of the great things about working in the events industry, that you work on something for such a long time. Here at SBC, we start producing our conference programmes nine or 10 months out. And then, all that time, all that work, you actually get to see it come to fruition.
So I am super excited for next week to see everything come to fruition. I am for every conference we do, but especially this one as this is the first edition of SBC Summit Americas really because we’re combining our former North America Summit with our former Latin America Summit, so I’m extremely excited to see how those two events which were already flagship events in their own right combine and become an even bigger event.
IGX: Yeah, the integration is really a perfect fit and it makes a lot of sense. I can’t wait to see it come together. Can you provide us an insight into what square one looks like when it comes to planning such a monster event like this?
AB: Yes, we start nine or 10 months out. We start as soon as the 2024 event is done, let’s say, then we really start preparing for the 2025 event because it’s all about getting the feedback from our audience.
The conference is made for the audience, I always say it’s made for the industry, by the industry. So we take our customer feedback really seriously. You know, we get a lot of comments, a lot of compliments, but sometimes complaints about the topics, the speakers and so on.
So it really does start then figuring out how we can always grow and improve upon the past year’s conference. And then it’s kind of about working with the expert speakers that we’ve had at that conference. Getting confirmation for next year is one thing, but also finding out what they think could be improved and what they think is going to be important in a year’s time. So it’s a balancing act, because we need to start the year out, but we also need to make sure that the topics we feature in the agenda are current.
IGX: It’s always great to see the freshness of the agenda when you are attending the event. It really underlines that you have your finger on the pulse of the industry. Having this flexibility must add stress though?
AB: Obviously it is stressful, but that’s one of the reasons I love SBC, is that we have the media arm of SBC, who really do have their fingers on the pulse. So it’s always incredibly helpful to have you guys there and to kind of bounce ideas off.
iGX: Florida was decided as the location for this event. Why Florida?
AB: That really comes from the combination of the North American audience and the Latin American audience. So Miami and the South Florida metropolitan area is, many people refer to it as the capital of Latin America, it’s one of the easiest places to fly from to other Latin American countries. For example, it’s easier to fly from Brazil to Miami or Argentina to Miami than it is to fly from Argentina to Colombia or to Mexico.
It is a major hub for Latin American business, even though it is in the United States. Miami is kind of a melting pot. It just represents that combination of, I guess, the English-speaking world and the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking world.
iGX: The event comes at a pivotal time for North America and North American sports because we are closing in on the FIFA World Cup across North America.
How vital do you think this event could be to helping operators, suppliers and any stakeholders in the industry maximise the opportunity of that World Cup?
AB: For sports betting companies, next year’s World Cup is a huge opportunity, but it could be a wasted opportunity, right? If they don’t know how to capitalise on it in the right way.
And if they’re not already out there building those partnerships and getting those brand campaigns underway. We do have a panel on the second day of the event this week, which is all around the tournament next year, on how companies can make the most of that.
It’s not only that, but I mean, one of the headliners that we have this week is the brand new CMO of BetMGM, who’s going to be talking all about building a new brand. That’s one of the major themes that runs throughout this year’s conference.
One of the brands you could call a second mover who has really done it right is Fanatics and their Chief Business Officer, will be one of the headliners this week as well and he’ll be talking all about how Fanatics has kind of pivoted and kind of bobbed and weaved to get to a good place with their audience base.
iGX: What challenges did that bring to you and just how important is it that you kind of ensured that there was an authentic Latin American knowledge in the conference?
AB: I’d say there were some challenges there, certainly, but it wasn’t the biggest challenge, as like you said earlier, these two regions mesh really well with each other.
I mean, there are a lot of parallels between sports betting in the US and sports betting in some countries. Brazil is just a few years behind in regulating, but the whole kind of federal versus state interplay there is very similar.
There are a lot of similarities between the two regions. But the challenge is making sure that the agenda appeals to everybody at the same time.
At the same time, the biggest challenge for me was that every time I wrote a session on the agenda, it then had to be translated into Spanish and or, you know, vice versa. So that has actually been a lot to deal with. Otherwise, it’s been great. And I think it’s a natural fit. It’s a natural integration.
