What does it really mean to call SBC Summit “The Greatest Show in Gaming”? In the first article in a new series written by SBC CEO and Founder Rasmus Sojmark, he looks beyond the headline and explains the thinking behind the event, from networking and education to experience, relationships and, ultimately, return on investment. He explores why scale alone is not enough and why the true measure of an event is the value people take away from it.
I have a birthday card somewhere at home that probably explains more about SBC Summit than any strategy document we’ve ever written.
A few years ago, the team photoshopped my face onto Hugh Jackman’s body on the poster for The Greatest Showman. Underneath, naturally, they’d written “The Greatest Showman”. I thought it was very funny.
Then, about a year later, I somehow ended up dressed in the actual Greatest Showman costume for our Halloween party at SBC Summit Latinoamérica.
So perhaps the warning signs were there.
But when we moved SBC Summit from Barcelona to Lisbon, the Greatest Show idea became much more serious. We had an opportunity to rethink what our flagship event could become, and I didn’t want us simply to create another gaming exhibition, only bigger.
I wanted us to create the Greatest Show in Gaming.
Calling your own event that is quite a claim. You had better be prepared to back it up.
We’re expecting 40,000 people in Lisbon. The exhibition occupies more than 135,000 square metres and more than 800 exhibitors and sponsors will be involved. I’m incredibly proud of those numbers, but I’ve never believed bigger automatically means better.
The more important question is what those numbers mean for the people attending.
Does having 40,000 people in Lisbon give you access to customers you wouldn’t otherwise meet? Does having hundreds of companies under one roof help you find technology that makes your business better? Can you learn something that saves money, opens a market or changes your strategy?
That’s where the real value lies.
Attending an international event is a serious investment. There are flights, hotels and tickets, but the biggest investment is probably time. If you’re taking several days away from running your business, we need to give you enough opportunities to justify doing it.
Internally, we think about SBC Summit through five areas: exhibition, networking, conference, education and experience. They’re different, but commercially they’re all trying to achieve the same thing: making those few days in Lisbon as valuable as possible.
The exhibition gives you access to hundreds of potential partners and products. Instead of spending months arranging separate demonstrations and conversations, you can compare companies and technologies in a matter of days.
Networking gives you access to people.
That’s particularly important in a global industry. If you’re considering entering Brazil, for example, you can meet operators, suppliers, lawyers, regulators and specialists who understand that market without making five separate international trips.
The conference gives you intelligence. You can hear how other companies are responding to regulatory change, new technologies and changing consumer behaviour, and use that knowledge to challenge your own strategy.
Education goes further by developing practical skills that people can take back into their jobs.
Then there’s experience, which might sound like the least commercial of the five, but I don’t think it is.
Business is built on relationships, and relationships develop when people spend time together. Some of the strongest partnerships I’ve seen in this industry began over dinner, at an awards ceremony or during a conversation that had nothing to do with the meeting originally in somebody’s diary.
That’s why we invest in creating an environment where people actually want to spend time.
Of course, experience also means making the event easy. Collecting your badge at the airport, finding where you’re going, having somewhere comfortable to meet and getting decent food aren’t glamorous innovations, but every hour you don’t waste is an hour you can spend doing something useful.
And yes, experience also means finishing the week with Tiësto at INFINITY Lisbon.
I make absolutely no apology for that. Business events should be enjoyable. But underneath everything we do is a fairly serious question about return on investment. When you return to the office, what changed because you went?
Maybe you’ve found a supplier that can reduce your costs. Perhaps you’ve met a partner who can help you enter a new market. Maybe a conference session changed your thinking or someone on your team learned a skill that improves the way they work.
You might simply have strengthened relationships with five important customers by spending proper time with them.
Those are meaningful business outcomes.
It’s also why I don’t think our job ends when 40,000 people walk through the doors. That’s when the important part starts.
The Greatest Show in Gaming isn’t really about how much we can put into an event. It’s about how much you can get out of it. That’s the standard we have to keep measuring ourselves against.
And then, once everyone has gone home and we’ve finally had some sleep, we start working out how to deliver even more value next year.
