Pierre Lindh of iGamingNEXT joins us on the Knup Sports Show to talk about the creation of iGamingNEXT as well as their upcoming event, iGamingNEXT NYC 2023.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Hey, what’s going on, everybody? Ryan Knuppel here, Knup Sports Show Episode 191, super excited to have another great guest on today, but first of all, we gotta talk just a second about that Super Bowl game last night. If any of you watched that, what a great game. High scoring game, kind of a little boring ending with the call and all of the above, I know there’s some controversy there for the Eagles’ fans that were hoping to pull that one out, but what a fun game and hopefully you enjoyed the commercials and Super Bowl halftime show and all of the above, but that’s what we’re in sports for, right? We love to watch the big games and hopefully your team, and maybe some of your bets landed during that, so, anyway, what else? So, lots of shows coming out, we’ve had lots of shows, we’re up to 191, coming up to our #200 here verys oon, and today I have a really special guest, I’m super excited to have him on. Been hoping to get him on for a couple years now, and he finally is able to join me, so let’s go ahead and bring on our special guest for today. Pierre Lindh of iGamingNEXT. Pierre, you’re with me, how are you my friend?
PIERRE LINDH
[Laughs]. Oh, I’ve been so good, Ryan. 10 minutes ago I came home, we’ve been away for a couple of weeks attending the big show ICE, of course, biggest show in the gambling industry globally, and last week, which was quite exciting. But, as you can tell a little bit from my voice, it leaves you with a bit of a hoarse voice after a week of taking meeting and so on. But, other than that, doing fantastic. How are you doing?
RYAN KNUPPEL
I’m doing well, and I’m glad I’m not the only one that has that issue. Everytime I go to these events, I come back and I don’t have a voice, I can’t talk, my throat hurts, everything, it’s like so exhausting, right? But it’s a good thing.
PIERRE LINDH
It’s a good sign, it’s a good sign, yeah.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Yeah, for sure. Well, I thank you for giving me some time. I know you’ve had a busy three weeks here and you have a busy three weeks coming up here over the next month, so I appreciate you giving us some time, and I’m excited to dive in. So, let’s do dive in. I know you host your own shows, you’re always talking to other guests, you host events, and iGamingNEXT has come a long way and we’ll talk a little bit about where that’s at, but I think what everybody that’s listening wants to hear a little bit more about is how that all began and how, maybe more of Pierre’s journey to get to where you are today and what you started with, so why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and your path to get to where you are with iGamingNEXT.
PIERRE LINDH
Absolutely, Ryan. But first of all, I must give some credits to you as well, I mean, 191 sessions here, that’s pretty incredible actually that you managed to do this, so congratulations to you as well, and I’m very thankful to be finally on here today as well. Um, I mean, in a nutshell, my career has always circulated around the gambling industry, so my short story is when I was about 15-16 years old, we used to always play poker in school, and I was the person who was handling the books in school, okay? I was always the person who did that. The teachers went crazy at school, they were trying to figure out who was responsible for this little gambling activities that were taking place in the breaks, but I was always able to keep those books away from the teachers and make sure that the game could always run better. I mean, we were playing for pennies more or less, but nonetheless, the teachers were not happy about it. So then one thing led to another, I continued in my poker interest, this was right in the poker boom in the middle of the 2000s, I was very active in the Swedish poker scene, I was in the Swedish Poker Federation in 2006, organized the Swedish Poker Championships, which is one of the oldest tournaments in the world, so organized that back in 2006-2007, got to know a lot of people in the industry. My passion has always been in the gambling industry, specifically poker back then, so eventually I was lucky enough to be poached by Betsson Group, who was based here in Malta, so 12 years ago, I came to Malta with nothing but one bag and a bit of a dream. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, I kept my flat back in Sweden, but 12 years later, I’m still here essentially. So I worked a couple of years for Betsson Group, before then sporting around events management company that we’ve been kind of building for the last 10 years, basically, with me and my business partner Martin. Same thing there, we were doing a lot of corporate events at the time, and iGamingNEXT was kind of a side thing for the company until the pandemic happened. So, you know, March 10th, 2020 or whatever it was, the world closed down pretty much overnight, which meant that all our events were cancelled, all our revenue were deleted of the entire year. We were thinking about, “Okay, what shall we do?” you know, “Shall we just kind of close this company and start working in the industry?”. We didn’t know what to expect with the pandemic, how long is it going to go on for, I remember some of the conferences early in the pandemic, they postponed for 1 month, so from April 2020 to June 2020, it’s easy to forget how we didn’t know what was going to happen and people thought that, you know, waiting one or two months, this is all gonna blow over basically. But we realized quite early that that was not going to be the case, so we postponed for the entire year of 2020, we postponed until 2021, and we said “Let’s see if we can do something digitally in the meantime”. But, rather than doing these kind of digital events with digital exhibitions, which we didn’t believe in, we said “Let’s try to do more content, let’s try to democratize content”, because this is also a bit of a silver lining of the pandemic, is that before the pandemic, it was very difficult to get the hold on really good thought leadership content in the gambling industry specifically. The only way to get a hold of that was to pay, say, $1000 tickets to get to ICE in order to be able to consume really good content. But we said “Why don’t we democratize it? Let’s bring it online and let’s bring it in front of everyone in the industry, and instead of charging money for it, we’ll monetize it by sponsorships basically” because there’s so many talented individuals in this industry that might not have access to this high-level thought leadership content, and if they just get access to the content, this will benefit the whole industry, it will push the whole industry forward. So that became our strategy back in 2020, May, and so iGamingNEXT became instead of a side project in our company, it became the company. And then the rest is history. It worked, eventually the pandemic subsided, and here we are today with some really exciting, both media and shows, in person back as well.
RYAN KNUPPEL
I love that story, I mean, good things can come from the bad things that happened, right? I mean the pandemic, nobody loved what was going on during the pandemic, but I think a lot of great businesses and great business plans were formed from that, and props to you and your team and everybody for being able to kind of be visionaries through that and see where that’s gonna lead and be able to pivot and shift and make the right moves. I’m telling you, you guys have done a great job and we really focus on the US side of things, and I’m super impressed and excited, impressed with what you’ve done already here in the US with one event, and now, like, the momentum heading into this second event here in New York City is just, it’s incredible, and so I’m excited to talk a little bit more about that event specifically here, that’s coming up in, don’t freak out, but less than 3 or 4 weeks, I think. You’ve got an event coming up, yeah, don’t forget that.
PIERRE LINDH
Jesus Christ, three weeks. [Laughs].
RYAN KNUPPEL
You got that coming up, yeah, in New York City 2023, iGamingNEXT, March 7-9. Tell us a little bit about that event. We’ll pull it up here on the screen as well, I’m sure everybody listening has heard about this, but just give us a little bit about the event.
PIERRE LINDH
Yeah, absolutely. So, when we founded iGamingNEXT New York last year, the first inaugural event took place in 2022, it was really on the back of the fact that the American onling gambling industry is growing exponentially at the moment, of course. It has been fueled in 2019 when PASPA was repealed, and, you know, I’m preaching to the choir here, of course, we all know about the industry, it’s growing and becoming something huge. And so, we really saw that as an opportunity to, again, bring real high-level thought leadership over the pond to the North American market as well. Obviously, New York legalized sports betting online last year, so the timing was perfect. Um, now going into 2023, we come on the back of a sold out event, which 2022 was, and we are going to sell out the event in 2023 as well, so for those of you who are watching now and kind of considering coming to the conference, please don’t delay it to book the tickets, because last year we had a lot of people who were really disappointed, who could not attend the show, even people who had booked their flights and accomodation, and not the ticket, and obviously we tried to help as much as we can, but don’t forget to purchase a ticket. Now, in 2023, the agenda is second to none. I mean, the whose who of the online space in the North American market is present at the event. Many many incredibly good speakers. We don’t only want to talk about the online gambling industry specifically, and online sports betting, but we also want to talk more about the macrotrends that we see in the world, in the world of finance, in the world of web3 and technology and AI, and so on and so forth, and also understand the intersection between this interspace and online gambling and online sports betting space, and also how does the macro environment affect our industry, you know? It’s always important not to forget the macrotrends and how they affect us, you know what I mean? A really good example now is the AI revolution that is taking place, like ChatGPT and the kind of incredible, um, exponential progress that is being made in the field of AI. What is that going to mean for the online gambling space? How can we leverage these technologies? It’s a really important discussion to have and a bit more granular than the general discussions that you see in general media, for example. So, we are just looking forward to getting to learn, to explore, get to know a lot of people. This is an incredible conference to just meet people, rather than these massive 1000 kind of people conferences. This is really made and tailormade for when you walk out of the conference, you should have met 100 people that you didn’t expect to meet at this conference. So, that’s in a nutshell what we’re looking to achieve.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Yeah. I mean, you touched on several thing that I wanted to touch on as well. But yeah, that’s one thing that really stood out with your agenda and people and your track, right, was that you touched on emerging trends and different things outside of gambling, or at least how they all applied to gambling, you know? I’m really into the web3 NFT space, and I noticed some tracks around that area that are gonna be really exciting to kind of learn and hear about, so yeah, really cool. Obviously, a whose who lineup of speakers that just is amazing, so congrats on that. March in New York should be a great time, a little cold but not too bad, not like winter, winter cold.
PIERRE LINDH
Cold for the Floridians. You live in Florida, right?
RYAN KNUPPEL
Yeah, I’m in Orlando. Everything’s cold to me. [Laughs].
PIERRE LINDH
Yeah, oh my god, I mean, I’m Swedish. This is like summer to me when I go to New York in March.
RYAN KNUPPEL
[Laughs]. Yeah, that’s crazy. Yeah, so, and I can attest also, I remember you guys last year having that issue of more people showing up than you could handle, right? It was, like, people coming in last minute and wanting to be a part of everything, so as Pierre said, anybody that’s wanting to go to this, make sure you get your ticket, get signed up, get on that list right away, and so, I think you guys, I think you gave me a ‘KNUP10’ promo code, which is kind of cool, so you can get 10% off, go out to iGamingNEXT.com, get all signed up there, get your ticket for New York City 2023 before they’re sold out. It’s gonna be quite an event. I’m really excited for it.
PIERRE LINDH
Absolutely. And I’m really looking forward to seeing you again there, Ryan. And your brother as well is a speaker too at the conference, I mean, this is not something to be underestimated as well.
RYAN KNUPPEL
That’s right, that’s right, he’s going to be on a panel, on one of the panels, so he’s excited to do that, and I’m excited to see you as well. I know I’ve seen you at other events, and we actually chatted I think before you actually had the first US event in New York. So, really, you know, I’m honored to be a friend of iGamingNEXT and really can help you guys do whatever you can. But, before I let you go here, I know we’re kind of wrapping up, but what does the future look like for iGamingNEXT as a company? I know you have a couple other events worldwide, not just a New York event, but what does the future look like? Is it more locations, is it just growing the current events that you have, where are you guys headed?
PIERRE LINDH
Yeah, I mean, you know, Ryan, it’s an interesting question because since the pandemic we’ve been kind of in fighting survival mode for a couple of years, and we’ve been just hardcore, kind of, startup, you know, bootstraps, grinding, and all the things, and in a way, a lot of things are coming together for the company at the moment. We have just an incredible team, the shows are established, the brand has turned out a lot of good things lately, and we just have an incredible support from the industry at large, from our sponsors, from our supporters, and so now we’re really going to the mode to see us as a bit of a leader in the space, so our goal is crystal clear. We don’t want to become these massive exhibitions that some of the other are aspiring to do. We don’t think that is the way to go, to be frank with you. I think as well, you know, since COVID we’ve seen a bit of a peak now in the industry, and it’s important not to get ahead of ourselves when it comes to the conferences specifically, but we see ourselves as a media first company, and the conferences is supporting our media efforts. We want to be the natural source for news, information, insights to the online gambling space, whether it’s being on the European side or the North American side, and so the products we have launched now, we are very happy with them. We are not looking to launch anything new necessarily, but we are just looking to perfect the products that we have, you know? And I think it’s also something that, people who come out of the pandemic now, specifically other conference and media organizers, it’s like, you know, it’s not only about launching new products all the time, and I think this is a mistake that others are doing, it’s also about looking inwards and trying to perfect and protect the products that you have. So that’s very clear our strategy, and we are just building on what we have, and there’s so much more to do here, there’s an incredible amount of things to work on here. But, yes, become a leader in the media space, that is where we are aspiring to be, at least.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Yeah, thank you for being so candid on your vision and where you guys are headed, because I think you’re right, because a lot of companies, and I’m one of them that falls into this trap of always wanting to grow and do more and do more and do more, but that’s not always the answer, right?
PIERRE LINDH
Yeah, and I’ll say it now.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Whatever you do well, perfect it, right?
PIERRE LINDH
And I say that, you know, and my team will laugh when they hear this because I am the absolute worst at this, I say it but end up with some new idea…
RYAN KNUPPEL
[Laughs].
PIERRE LINDH
I’m the worst at this myself.
RYAN KNUPPEL
So they’re going to be rolling their eyes when they hear that.
PIERRE LINDH
They will definitely. [Laughs].
RYAN KNUPPEL
Awesome. Well, Pierre, it was really good to have you on. Any last words for the people watching? We probably have a lot of people that are coming to the event and hopefully some others that will now get their tickets, but any last words for the people watching?
PIERRE LINDH
Well, we are very excited to come over the pond again to New York. We are really excited just to see everyone there again, there’s a lot of new faces, a lot of old faces. Obviously, we’re really happy to have you guys there, and as you pointed out here in the beginning, Ryan, I think you were one of our earliest supporters actually, because when we launched in New York at first, no one knew who we were essentially. No one knew who we were, and you guys were right there to take the meeting with us, you were right there to support us from the beginning, and that really means a lot, Ryan, so you should know that as well. We are big supports of you guys as well, and we are very happy to support you guys in any way we can. So thank you for having me on here today, Ryan, I really appreciate that.
RYAN KNUPPEL
Amazing. The pleasure is mine, Pierre. Thank you, and good luck with the event, and I’ll make sure to say hello when I’m there, so, good luck heading into that event and all the planning that’s gonna go there. I’m sure it’s gonna be amazing. So, thanks for coming on, really appreciate it, Pierre. Have a good day.
PIERRE LINDH
Brilliant. Thanks so much, Ryan. And I’ll bring a pair of gloves for you.
RYAN KNUPPEL
[Laughs]. I’ll need it. Alright my friend, talk to you soon.
Alright, that was Pierre Lindh of iGamingNEXT. Wow, that’s going to be a great show. So pleased to be able to have him on. I tried to get him on last year and it just didn’t work, but this year having him on an upcoming event. March 7-9, New York City, iGamingNEXT 2023. Do not miss it. As I said in the beginning, you can use promo code ‘KNUP10’, get 10% off your ticket if you haven’t got a ticket already. Please make sure if you are coming, shoot me a message as well. I’d love to connect with you, say hello, have lunch, have a beer, have dinner, whatever, just come and say hello to you and just meet people that are listening to this show because I really do appreciate your support for this show as well. Um, I think that’s it. I’ll see you in March at iGamingNEXT, and we want to thank Pierre for coming on once again, so until next time, stay safe, I’m Ryan Knuppel, @knup all over on social media, and that was Episode 191. Alright everybody, take care, talk to you soon. Bye-bye.
Relevant Links:
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