SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
GamCrowd has announced that Athens-based live pool betting product provider Playventure is the winner of this year’s Pitch ICE competition.
Playventure beat 13 other start-up competitors to this year’s title. Each took part in the GamCrowd show at ICE Totally Gaming at the ExCel in early February, taking to the stage to talk to event attendees about their business idea. Alongside the winner, the show featured fantasy and social gaming ideas such as Top Flight Manager and Koodbee, gaming services suppliers, payments providers and a new responsible gambling tool.
Playventure allows players to compete against other in a tournament format with the winnings distributed on a pool-betting basis.
Chris North, GamCrowd Founder and the organiser of this year’s show in conjunction with Clarion Gaming, said he was pleased with the result: “I’m delighted for Playventure; they deserve the prize. They gave a great presentation, they have a great product and they were consistently promoting themselves before, during and after the show.”
Katerina Mygiaki, Marketing Executive at Playventure, said of the achievement: “Live Plus winning Pitch ICE was the best thing that could happen to us. We were one of these literally-last-minute entries and we really put a lot of effort and time into making it work. From the pitch video, to the pitching process, the networking and the feedback during ICE, today we believe it all paid off.”
She added: “We knew we had a great idea, an innovative product and a good team to support it, but we also knew that the competition was really high and that we had to give our best in order to win. And we did.”
North added that the success of Playventure was another endorsement of the Pitch ICE process. He explained: “The winner faced stiff competition this year; the standard of entrants was very high and there were some great businesses in the line-up that I’m sure we will be hearing more from in the coming months.”
He continued: “The feedback we have had from this year’s show has been tremendous and displays the level interest in the industry for supporting innovation, new ideas and entrepreneurs. We’ll be at the upcoming GiGse and EiG in October and we will be back next year for Pitch ICE 2017 as we look to build on this success.”
A history of success
Pitch ICE has started to prove its worth to the wider industry. Gamevy, the winner of last year’s award, received further accolades this time round by winning Game to Watch for The Heist. Another Pitch ICE alumnus Fenway Games also took home an award with its SnapBet product.
The two days of Pitch ICE were followed by the a Studio day on the Thursday wherein a host of industry experts and start-up advisors gave talks designed to help companies through critical stages in their business journey.
North said: “We think the whole show showed clearly the sheer amount of talent within and coming to the gaming industry, but also signposted how companies and entrepreneurs need help from the off. This is what GamCrowd News and Studio is designed to do.”
