Ahead of Kambi’s Festival of Sportsbook on 6-9 June, SBC News caught up with the company’s SVP Marketing & Communications, Gerard Starkey, to find out what delegates can expect from the 2023 edition of the event.
SBC: What is Kambi’s Festival of Sportsbook?
Gerard Starkey: The Festival of Sportsbook is a digital event hosted by Kambi which has been running for the last three years and features expert speakers from within Kambi and across the wider market. Content is designed for a broad industry audience with public sessions and those exclusively for our partners across the globe, with valuable insights on the key topics impacting the global sports betting landscape.
The first two iterations of the Festival proved to be incredibly successful and we can’t wait to deliver a Festival that is better than ever this year as we explore the future of sport betting with a week full of high-quality content for attendees.
SBC: Who are some of the external speakers you are looking forward to welcoming to the Festival?
GS: We are particularly excited about this year’s event as we’ve been able to capitalise on previous years’ success by attracting additional external industry speakers and commercial partners such as SBC Media, one of the largest news portals for the sports betting and gaming industry. As part of the partnership, SBC has been helping promote the event with a dedicated landing page on their website, as well as hosting their own Festival session.
Other partners include VIXIO Regulatory Intelligence and Eilers & Krejcik Gaming, two of the industry’s leading research and intelligence companies. They’ve joined our strong line-up as we explore the future of sports betting with sessions titled ‘Market Outlook: The global sports betting opportunity’ and ‘Permanent disruption: trends impacting sports betting today and tomorrow’.
We are also looking forward to having tribal gaming leaders joining our session on the ‘Path to on-property sportsbook success’ as well as a number of execs from our partner network and Kambi Group companies Shape Games and Abios.
SBC: Artificial intelligence is obviously a major talking point in this industry and further afield. How does Kambi plan to address this topic at the Festival?
GS: This year’s Festival comes at an important time for the industry as technology advances in sports betting are accelerating rapidly, not least with the developments in artificial intelligence, which we will discuss as part of a dedicated session at the Festival.
During the World Cup last year, we unveiled our AI-led algorithmic trading capability that enables Kambi to price and change odds without human intervention. As such, we have a unique story to tell with regards to artificial intelligence in the context of sports trading, which will be delivered by our SVP of Analytics, David Jacquet, who is heading up the team driving our AI-driven trading.
SBC: What are some of the other sessions you are particularly excited about?
GS: Another must-watch for those within sports betting will be our panel with Abios, which will be focusing on the rapidly evolving world of competitive esports. Despite being a relatively new part of the sports betting offer, esports is a top-10 sport across our partner network and our experts from Abios will be providing some great insights on how to approach creating a quality esports betting product.
Our session on tennis should also be at the top of attendees’ lists. Tennis is a top-five sport on Kambi’s global network and one of the true global sports, and in this session we’ll discuss how betting on tennis has evolved and why it is such a great sport for live betting.
Every session at the Festival offers a unique perspective on a specific area of the industry and we hope there will be content there for everyone to enjoy and learn from.
Click here to see the full agenda for Kambi’s Festival of Sportsbook and register for your free pass.