SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Rasmus Sojmark is the CEO of Oddslife, a fast growing social sports and gaming network operated in partnership with leading sports media brands around the world.
Clients of Oddslife include media brands such as Marca.com in Spain, Gazzetta.gr in Greece, LiveSport.cz in Czech Republic, Bold.dk in Denmark, Sportal.bg in Bulgaria and Football.ua in Ukraine.
Formerly of BetBrain and EveryMatrix, Rasmus has huge experience and an extensive network in the online gaming industry. He has also picked up a number of awards, including eGR’s Sports Betting Rising Star in 2011, and founded the Sports Betting Community (SBC).
Looking ahead to ICE Totally Gaming 2016, which takes place next week, we spoke to Rasmus about his preparation and plans for the three day London conference:
How I prepare for ICE
RS: ICE preparation for me begins a long time before the actual event. So much about the event is knowing who to speak to, how to divide your time effectively and how to make connections with key people to help push your business forward. Conversations between Oddslife and prospective clients began a few months back, with follow up meetings scheduled to take place at the Excel next week, followed by LAC.
It is vital for us that we present ourselves in the right way and communicate the qualities of our revamped team. We are a funded technology company with strong investors, which is the message we want to get across when we demonstrate the opportunities and scale of the new Oddslife platform.
There are so many ways in which we can help media companies, and also bookmakers and consumer brands extend their reach, create new revenue streams and facilitate a deeper, more authentic relationship with their users.
What I am doing at ICE 2016
RS: A big aim for us at ICE 2016 is to speak to partners about our platform towards Euro 2016. We are in talks with media companies in multiple European countries, as well as in Africa and Latin America. We want to become the market leader in risk-free, socially engaging and community-driven content platforms for local markets which starts with the football’s show-piece tournament in 2016.
We are also talking to new and existing partners about our in-house built blogging platform, as we look to provide a complete community-driven content hub. Users can now publish their own articles, tagged to sports or specific matches, and compete on leaderboards based on total article views and shares.
Media partners can also boost the quality of this user-generated content by translating and publishing shared content provided by our English media client, who have helped us to create a detailed blogging academy, including expert tips, as part of our complete editorial experience.
In fact, it is SBC / SBCnews.co.uk we have commissioned to take care of this part, and we have seen some great content being produced by their content team for the Oddslife platform and our media partners.
This new addition to our platform shows how Oddslife have embraced the explosion in user generated content and the rise of social media. We think it sits perfectly alongside our tipster competitions, fanzones and match pages, which give you more detailed match information than on any other social network.
What I’m looking forward to at ICE 2016
RS: I love the ICE conference and have been attending every year for more than decade; the variety of people, meeting up with industry friends and the crazy scale of some of the exhibitions makes for an interesting few days.
I am excited about my meeting up with my friends Thomas and Martin at Golden Race, whose booth includes a live exhibition of real fighters to promote their new virtual fighting game. I expect to be extremely busy, but I’d still like to check that one out! I also fancy my chances in saving a Michael Owen penalty on the Colossus Bets stand.
I am also very excited about revealing the names of a few new partners we have brought in to the Oddslife family. Among others, we are talking about one of Europe’s largest media groups.
Where you will usually find me at ICE
RS: I’ll be flicking between various meetings and attending a few conferences, but for the large part you can find me at the SBC stand, SD2-C/D.
First ICE attended
RS: You may not believe me, but the first ICE conference I attended was 10 years ago in 2006 back at Earl’s Court. The event has moved on and scaled up at an incredible rate since then, but it remains an enjoyable few days. I haven’t missed one since 2006 and I can’t foresee missing one anytime soon!
Typical post-ICE activity
RS: Of course following up on meetings and contacts made at ICE will be crucial for us, and making sure we capitalise on the size of the conference and the opportunities it throws up. But we are also extremely excited about sponsoring the London Baby party, on Tuesday 2nd February at Café de Paris.
London Baby 2016 marks the sixth edition of one of the sector’s’ biggest and most anticipated networking events, with organisers SBC and iGaming Business expecting more than 1,000 industry representatives to attend. We will be spreading the word at ICE and trying to get everyone involved!
