INSIGHT ICE LONDON - BARCELONA CLARION GAMING
Stuart, has it been four years at Clarion Gaming?
I've worked for the wider Clarion business for almost 18 years, so I'd been to the ICE show on many of occasions before I took over the role over at Clarion Gaming. I've had the opportunity to work in the gaming division for four years. Time flies.
It's been a turbulent period. Covid in 2020, the show cancellation in 2021, the mini-ICE in 2022; a record-breaking ICE in 2023 - a final London ICE in February and then Barcelona in 2025. How challenging has it been?
I think everyone has experienced huge challenges over the last four years. I can only reflect personally on my experience within Clarion Gaming. Te COVID period was really tough as live events were illegal for much of that period. However, we chose to look at the positives. During a period in which we all spent too much time on Zoom calls, I took the opportunity to really get to know our customers. Obviously that was a big mandate for me personally, moving into a new division, a new market and industry, I wanted to get to know everyone. I spent a huge amount of time doing just that. And I learned a lot. Hopefully, the industry felt that we listened and we've been doing that ever since. We pride ourselves on being customer-centric and part of the industry, which helps ensure we deliver was what the industry wants.
If I look back to all the shows in those four years, I think they stand on their own merits. Even the Mini-ICE, which we would never run again, was an experience our customers wanted to happen. And in 2023, I think the relief for everybody coming back strong, uniting the industry together, was extraordinary. All the data suggests that 2024 is going to be another great show and we're really excited to present the final London ICE in February.
You've teased that you've something special coming for the last London show. What do you have in store, and what's it going to feel like leaving Excel?
I think it's going to feel pretty emotive actually. I've listened to lots of stories from people visiting ICE for many decades. ICE has existed in various forms for over 80 years. It's has deep roots in the UK market. I was at Clarion as Kate Chambers and her team were working with brands to assure them of the move from Earls Court to ExCeL in 2012. It was a challenging period, but look at the result. ExCeL has provided a great infrastructure and environment for the ICE show to grow. ICE has expanded massively to the point where it's outgrown ExCeL in many ways. And that's the industry growing.
ICE has always reflected the health of the gaming business. So, while it will be sad to leave ExCeL, the move to Barcelona is part of
Stuart Hunter Managing Director Clarion Gaming
Allocating the space is probably the biggest challenge in terms of redesigning the event in a new format and in a new venue, but it's also the most rewarding. But starting with your first point, are we ticking all the boxes? I think that's largely impossible, as much as we might try. I'd like to think we're ticking most of the boxes, certainly from what our customers are telling us.
We plan is to give London the send-off it deserves and give a warm welcome to Barcelona. We will be celebrating with a closing ceremony, which we've never done before. Every year we open the show, and that's always a special moment. This time, for the final London show, we'll be doing something from a closing perspective. I'm not going to big it up too much, it'll be like the passing of the baton. It's not the Olympics, but we do want to record the moment.
the growth cycle of the industry. Te relocation of ICE is the future. We have separate teams and a business strategy working in parallel right now to ensure London and the Barcelona show meet expectations. We've been working on this since the announcement of the relocation in August, and since then there's been lots of work in the background, with our existing ICE team fully focused on delivering ICE and the iGB Affiliate show in February this year.
We plan is to give London the send-off it deserves and give a warm welcome to Barcelona. We will be celebrating with a closing ceremony, which we've never done before. Every year we open the show, and that's always a special moment. Tis time, for the final London show, we'll be doing something from a closing perspective. I'm not going to big it up too much, it'll be like the passing of the baton. It's not the Olympics, but we do want to record the moment.
Has the move to Barcelona ticked all the boxes for the exhibitors? How have you been allocating space? Is there a particular ICE formula?
In 2023 we hosted orientation site visits and tours around both the city and the venue. Te feedback from those events, attended by around 40 advisory board customers, the biggest space takers at ICE, has been out of this world. Tey've been really appreciative of the schedule we've put together from a Clarion perspective, but they were also enthusiastic about the venue and the city. It's been a really enjoyable experience, combined with fact-finding and a lot of learning. We're going to be hosting further events in March/ April time.
Anyone that wants to experience Barcelona and the venue, will have the opportunity to do so this year. We've also filmed a virtual tour, which we'll be releasing shortly. So there's lots of information we're putting out there, which hopefully will give everyone what they need, but in terms of ticking everyone's boxes, I think that's going to be a work in progress all the way through.
Obviously, the number one question our exhibitor base wants answered, is what space am I going to get? Where am I going to be, et cetera? And that's a bigger challenge. We've been working through those top 40 companies to make sure that we can accommodate them first, because once we've built those companies into the floor plan, it becomes easier to build everything around them. Some of those builds are hugely complex. Tey require lots of different components to make them work - from health and safety sign-offs to traffic flow. So that's why it's taken a bit of time. But what I will add, and this wasn't originally one of the reasons why our customers wanted to move the show from London, but space is another positive of the relocation. One of the benefits of the Barcelona venue now is that customers have more room to breathe, with many customers able to reconfigure their stands in ways they've asked us for years to do at ExCeL, but we haven't been unable to accommodate until now.
We haven't been able to say yes because we haven't had the space. So what I'm seeing from a selection of customers is unbound creativity, with exhibitors enthused about presenting their businesses in new innovative ways. Te new floor plan allows for adaptation and change, which in turn has meant it's taking a bit more time to plot out the shape of the floorplan.
We wanted to have the big bulk of the exhibition mapped by the end of January,
WIRE / PULSE / INSIGHT / REPORTS P89
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