Multiple Portuguese government and Lisbon city dignitaries turned out to welcome SBC and its 40,000 attendees to the city for the third year running, taking part in an official ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark the opening of SBC Summit.
The Mayor of Lisbon, Carlos Moedas, delivered the event’s opening remarks ahead of the ribbon-cutting ceremony, where officials were joined by SBC leadership and the event’s key sponsors. The dignitaries then took part in a VIP tour of the exhibition floor at Feira Internacional de Lisboa (FIL), meeting industry leaders, exhibitors and SBC Summit partners.
Speaking at the opening, SBC CEO and Founder Rasmus Sojmark said the company was proud to welcome attendees back to Lisbon, with this year’s event bringing together around 40,000 people.
“We’ve come a long way in 12 years,” added Andrew McCarron, Managing Director at SBC. “I can’t believe we’re speaking to so many people and you’ve all come up to Lisbon to join us.”
Officials in attendance included Maria Luísa Aldim, Deputy Mayor for Innovation and Social Development; Rita Prates, CEO, Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa; António Ramalho, Vice President, FIL; António Valle, Director-General, Turismo de Lisboa; Carlos Abade, President, Turismo de Portugal; and Jorge Vinha da Silva, CEO, MEO Arena.
Senior representatives from several of SBC Summit’s major sponsors also attended the ceremony, including SoftConstruct, Digitain, Alea, EGT and Amusenet, joining city officials and SBC leadership.
Vigen Badalyan, Founder & CEO, SoftConstruct; Vardges Vardanyan, Founder, Digitain; Alex Tomic, Founder, Alea; Vladimir Dokov, CEO, EGT; and Ivo Georgiev, CEO, Amusenet, were all in attendance.
Sojmark said SBC was “very happy to have the support of the city we have chosen to host our biggest and most ambitious event,” adding that Lisbon had proven to be “the perfect fit” for the summit.
Lisbon highlights innovation and the gaming industry’s wider impact
Moedas used his opening remarks to highlight Lisbon’s efforts to establish itself as a technology and innovation hub, pointing to the city’s Unicorn Factory initiative and the arrival of 18 unicorn companies, alongside 120 other tech companies and more than 20,000 jobs.
The mayor also highlighted the potential for the gaming sector to contribute beyond its commercial role. “The gaming industry understands, like no other, emotions, behaviour and people,” Moedas said.
He pointed to the example of Hossein Jalali, an Iranian engineer who established a gaming company in Lisbon focused on using games and immersive experiences to support people with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.
“You create jobs, you have technology, you have great ideas, but you can also change the lives of people,” Moedas said.
The mayor encouraged companies attending the summit to look beyond commercial growth and consider their wider social impact.
“You have to do something more, which is to create purpose,” he said.
Tuesday’s ceremony continued a pattern of high-level engagement from city and government officials. Mayor Moedas and then-Minister of Economy Pedro Reis had attended personally when the event first relocated from Barcelona.
Michael Jordan headlines opening keynote
Ahead of the ceremony, officials were hosted at the MEO Arena, Lisbon’s largest indoor venue, for the Leadership in Sports Business keynote.
Basketball icon, investor and philanthropist Michael Jordan, Sportradar founder and CEO Carsten Koerl, and DraftKings co-founder, CEO and Chairman Jason Robins joined broadcaster Kirsty Gallacher on stage for a conversation about the changing relationship between sports, technology, media and betting.
Koerl pointed to the accelerating pace of technological change around sports, saying: “We are now developing technologies for a high-speed sector that is being powered by AI.”
He argued that the increasingly fragmented way fans consume sports also creates new commercial opportunities, with audiences moving between live games, data, social media, betting and other forms of engagement.
“Nothing is linear anymore. We must expect that sports live in a mixed environment,” Koerl said. “But there is now an opportunity to commercialise every element, data point, broadcast, bet and now merchandise as an experience.”
For Robins, the challenge is bringing those different experiences together. He highlighted DraftKings’ Super App as a central technology project, designed to consolidate products that previously existed across different applications.
“The idea of the Super App was we’re going to take all these different products that we have, a lot of which were living in different apps before, and bring them all into one single app,” Robins said.
Jordan, meanwhile, reflected on the relationship between sports, technology and the audiences that surround them, with authenticity emerging as a central theme of his involvement with both DraftKings and Sportradar.
“We all kind of wish we were Michael. We wish we were out there winning championships,” Robins said, reflecting on Jordan’s influence as an athlete and sports business figure.
That relationship also extends into Jordan’s investment in NASCAR, where he sees opportunities to introduce the sport to audiences beyond its traditional base through technology, data and betting.
The conversation ultimately returned to the relationship between data, betting and the sporting experience. Jordan noted that modern fans can “follow every statistic, every movement and every betting market,” but said his own approach to the game would have remained unchanged.
“I just play the game. I can’t worry about what people are betting on. I can’t worry about what the stats are,” Jordan said.
Brazil ban, iGaming trends become talking points on show floor
Brazil was also a major talking point around the SBC Summit following President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s announcement of a ban on regulated betting only days before the event.
Operators and legal experts at the show discussed the implications of the measure, with industry representatives highlighting the uncertainty created by the decision while legal experts noted that the proposed ban still requires congressional approval.
Technology and future market growth were also prominent across the exhibition floor.
SOFTSWISS, one of the major exhibitors at the summit, presented its new 2027 iGaming Trends report, with Head of Product for Sportsbook Ilyas Verdiev highlighting projections for continued global growth.
According to the report, online gambling GGR is projected to rise from $349 billion in 2026 to $377.5 billion in 2027 and $415.5 billion in 2028. North America is among the markets expected to see significant growth, with GGR projected to increase by more than $18 billion over the two-year period to reach $76.6 billion in 2028.
SBC Summit adds new events and networking formats
In its third year in the city, SBC Summit is introducing several firsts, including a standalone summit for the affiliate and performance marketing community, Affiliate Leaders Summit, alongside the Global Prediction Markets Forum and the African Gaming Forum.
Tuesday also marked the Opening Party, featuring a headline performance from multi-platinum-selling band The Script.
Attendees can also expect a brand-new structured networking programme, high-profile keynotes with football transfer journalist Fabrizio Romano, known worldwide for breaking major signings, and UFC champion Charles Oliveira.
The event will conclude with the Infinity Lisbon night, headlined by famous DJ Tiësto.
SBC Summit will return to Feira Internacional de Lisboa and the MEO Arena on September 21-23, 2027.
Check today’s agenda here.