Rasmus Sojmark on where the industry is going - the next 12 months in iGaming

Few people have as broad a view of the shifts that reshape global gambling as Rasmus Sojmark. As Founder and Chief Executive of SBC, he has a rare vantage point across the sector, with direct insight into its key stakeholders at a time when global gambling is going through an evolving set of pressures.  Ahead of the SBC Summit this month, Sojmark speaks about the next 12 months in iGaming, from A1 and prediction markets to taxation, regulation and changing consumer behaviour.  In this exclusive interview, he explains how the industry is increasingly shifting towards a deeper understanding of the player. 

Q. You have an unparalleled overview on the gambling industry: operators, suppliers, regulators, investors and technology companies as they are all simultaneously communicating with and through SBC. What are the industry stakeholders talking about in 2026 that they were not talking about a year ago?

Rasmus Sojmark: I think the conversation has become much more fundamental.

A year ago, a lot of the discussion around AI, prediction markets, new technology and regulation was still about what might happen. Now companies are asking what these things actually mean for their businesses and the industry as a whole.

AI is probably the clearest example. We have moved very quickly from talking about AI as an interesting technology to discussing where it genuinely changes the economics of the industry — product development, personalisation, customer service, trading, compliance, marketing and the way companies operate internally.

Prediction markets have also become a much bigger strategic conversation, particularly in the US, because they challenge some of the traditional definitions around betting and gaming. To discuss it from a global perspective we have launched the Global Prediction Markets Forum as part of the SBC Summit in Lisbon.

At the same time, taxation and regulation are becoming much more important board-level issues. In some markets the question is no longer simply how quickly you can grow, but whether the economics of operating in that market still make sense.

So I think 2026 feels less like another year of incremental change. There are several forces hitting the industry simultaneously, and companies are having to make some quite important decisions about what their businesses should look like three or five years from now.

Q: Conferences are often a useful barometer of an industry’s confidence. Looking at the conversations, investment and people coming to Lisbon this year, what does the mood tell you about where iGaming is heading? In your opinion would it be expansion, consolidation or something more fundamental?

Rasmus Sojmark: I would say all three, depending on where you look.

There is definitely consolidation. Regulation is getting tougher, taxation is increasing in a number of markets and the cost of competing at scale continues to rise. That naturally favours companies with strong brands, technology, capital and customer relationships.

But at the same time, there is enormous expansion. Brazil and Latin America remain hugely important, Africa is developing very quickly, and there are opportunities emerging across Asia and other regulated and regulating markets. We are also seeing regulation in European markets like Austria and North Macedonia, and of course Alberta in Canada.

What I find particularly interesting is the amount of investment still going into technology and products. Companies clearly believe there is another generation of gambling products coming.

That is also what we are seeing with the SBC Summit. The scale of investment from exhibitors, the seniority of the people coming and the international spread of the audience don't suggest an industry lacking confidence.

But I think it is becoming a more mature confidence. It is less "growth at any cost" and much more about where you invest, which markets you enter, what technology you own and how you create sustainable competitive advantage.

Q: The industry is being pulled in several directions at once: AI, prediction markets, higher taxation, tougher regulation and rapidly changing consumer behaviour. What do you think will impact the competitive roadmap over the next three years?

Rasmus Sojmark: AI will obviously have an enormous impact, but I don't think there is one single factor.

The biggest change may actually be the combination of all these pressures.

Operators are going to have to become much better at understanding the economics of individual markets and individual customers. Higher taxation and acquisition costs make inefficient growth much harder to sustain.

At the same time, AI will give companies completely new capabilities around personalisation, CRM, customer service, risk, trading, responsible gambling and product development.

Then you have a new generation of consumers whose expectations are being shaped by TikTok, Netflix, gaming, fintech and other consumer technology — not necessarily by traditional gambling products.

For me, that combination means the competitive advantage increasingly moves towards companies that understand their customers extremely well and can use technology to create better, more relevant experiences for them.

The winners won't necessarily be the companies spending the most money. They will be the companies learning fastest.

Q: SBC Summit has become the premier event in the iGaming calendar. What in your opinion should somebody be able to take away from SBC Summit that they could not get from LinkedIn, a webinar or a meeting?

Rasmus Sojmark: Relationships.

You can consume information anywhere now. You can watch a webinar, read research, follow people on LinkedIn or have a Teams meeting from anywhere in the world.

What you cannot replicate digitally is having 40,000 people from the global industry in one place and the opportunities that creates. SBC Summit is the best platform for this.

You can meet an operator in Brazil in the morning, a regulator from Africa at lunch, sit with a European CEO in the afternoon and discover a technology company you didn't know existed while walking the exhibition floor.

And often the most valuable conversation is not the one you scheduled.

That is what I think the best events create: density of opportunity.

Our job at SBC is increasingly to make that density intelligent — bringing the right people together through the show floor, conference participation, tech academies, meetings, communities, dinners, roundtables, regulatory meetups, the Leaders Summit and many other formats.

If somebody spends three days with us in Lisbon, I want them to leave with relationships and opportunities that materially change their business.

Q: You see many companies competing for attention at SBC. What separates the businesses that genuinely feel as though they are building the next generation of the industry from those simply repackaging what already exists?

Rasmus Sojmark: Normally they are solving a real problem.

There is always a lot of noise around new technology. Every year there are new buzzwords, and suddenly everybody's product description starts sounding the same. The companies that impress me tend to start somewhere else. They understand a problem that operators or players genuinely have and they can explain very clearly why their solution is better.

They also tend to have strong people behind them who understand the industry but are willing to challenge how it currently works. And increasingly I think the best companies are also looking outside gambling for inspiration. Consumer technology, gaming, entertainment, payments and AI are moving incredibly quickly.

If we only look at what other gambling companies are doing, eventually we just keep building slightly different versions of the same thing.

Q: SBC has put Player Experience alongside AI, Web3 and digital marketing within its Education+ programme. That is quite a statement about where competitive advantage is moving. Why is “player experience” an Academy of its own?

Rasmus Sojmark: Because ultimately everything comes back to the player. We can talk about AI, payments, CRM, marketing, gamification and new technology, but all of those things eventually touch the same person.

For a long time, gambling has been very focused on acquisition. How do we get another customer? How do we improve conversion? How do we reduce CPA?nThose questions obviously still matter, but the competitive battle is much more about what happens after somebody becomes a customer.

Do we understand them? Is the product relevant to them? Is the experience enjoyable? Do they trust the brand? Do they feel that they belong? Do they stay? And importantly, can we build that experience responsibly?

Player Experience deserves its own Academy because it brings together product, technology, marketing, data, psychology and player protection. Those disciplines cannot really be treated separately anymore.

Q:  For years, the industry’s growth model was heavily weighted towards acquisition. Are we reaching the point where the real competitive battle is no longer who can acquire the most players, but who can understand them, and keep them?

Rasmus Sojmark: Absolutely. Acquisition will always matter, particularly when new markets are regulated. But the economics are changing.

If taxation increases, marketing becomes more expensive and regulation limits some acquisition channels, the value of retaining a good customer increases enormously. That changes the question from "How many players did we acquire?" to "How valuable is the relationship we built with them?"

And that requires much deeper customer understanding. Two players placing exactly the same bet might have completely different motivations and completely different expectations from the product.

The companies that understand those differences will be able to create better experiences, communicate more intelligently and ultimately build stronger customer relationships. I think we are moving from an acquisition industry towards much more of a customer industry.

Q: Some of the most successful engagement mechanics now used in gambling originated in video games, entertainment and consumer technology. But gambling cannot simply import those techniques wholesale. Where, in your view, is the line between designing something compelling and designing something that becomes overly persuasive?

Rasmus Sojmark: That is an extremely important distinction.

There is nothing wrong with creating a brilliant product. We should want gambling products to be entertaining, intuitive and engaging. But gambling is different because money and risk are involved.

So you cannot simply take every engagement technique that works in gaming or social media and assume it belongs in gambling. For me, the important question is whether you are improving the customer's experience or exploiting a behavioural vulnerability.

That is where responsible product design becomes incredibly important. And I actually think the companies that get this right will build better businesses. Trust is going to become an increasingly important competitive advantage in regulated gambling.

Q: The Academy deliberately brings commercial performance and player protection into the same conversation. The industry has traditionally treated those as competing objectives. Do you think that is becoming an outdated way of thinking and can better player protection actually produce a better commercial product?

Rasmus Sojmark: I think treating them as opposites is increasingly outdated.

A sustainable gambling business needs customers who enjoy the product, understand what they are doing and trust the company they are playing with.

If your commercial model depends on creating bad outcomes for customers, eventually you have a regulatory problem, a reputational problem or a customer problem - normally all three. The interesting opportunity now is using the same technology and data that improves personalisation to improve player protection.

If you genuinely understand customer behaviour, you should be able to identify what somebody enjoys, what is relevant to them and also when behaviour starts changing in a way that may indicate a problem.

That is why I think these conversations belong together. Good player protection shouldn't sit somewhere outside the product. It should be part of building a better product.

Q: One of the most interesting parts of the Academy is the interactive ‘Know Your Player’ workshop, where delegates have to work through different player behaviours and motivations rather than simply listen to another panel. Why was it important to make people solve the problem themselves and what do you think the exercise will expose about how well the industry really understands its customers?

Rasmus Sojmark: Because conferences need to evolve as well.

There is still huge value in listening to great people on stage, and we are investing more than ever in bringing exceptional speakers to the SBC Summit. But education cannot only be people sitting in rows watching panels. Sometimes the best way to understand a problem is to actually work through it.

The "Know Your Player" workshop forces people to make decisions based on different customer behaviours, motivations and situations. That immediately makes the discussion much more practical.

And I suspect it will expose something interesting: as an industry, we have an extraordinary amount of customer data, but having data is not necessarily the same thing as understanding people. If delegates leave questioning some of their assumptions about their customers, then I think the exercise has done exactly what it should.

Q: Every conference promises that the next edition will be bigger and better. What is genuinely different about SBC Summit 2026, and what will someone who attended last year encounter in Lisbon this September that they have not seen before?

Rasmus Sojmark: I actually try not to say "bigger and better" anymore because everybody says it. Our ambition since moving SBC Summit to Lisbon has been much bigger than simply increasing the size of the exhibition. We want to build what we call the Greatest Show in Gaming -  the annual global gathering where the entire industry comes together.

This year we are expecting around 40,000 people, but the number itself is not what excites me most. It is who those 40,000 people are. We have been putting enormous effort into bringing more operators, affiliates, regulators, associations, government representatives and senior decision-makers from around the world to Lisbon. We want the people our exhibitors and delegates actually want to meet to be there.

Then we are building much more around those audiences - the SBC Leaders Summit, regulatory meetups, VIP dinners, dedicated forums, structured meetings, networking formats and more interactive Education+ Academies like Player Experience. And then there is the experience.

Michael Jordan will make his first European speaking appearance on our Super Stage. We have Jason Robins, Carsten Koerl and some incredible industry leaders joining us. The Script are headlining our Opening Party, and we are continuing to invest heavily in everything that happens around the exhibition and conference.

Because I don't think a world-class business event has to be boring. People are travelling from all over the world and giving us three days of their time. Yes, they need to do serious business, meet the right people and learn something valuable. But they should also go home saying: "That was an unbelievable experience."

If we can combine those two things - serious business and unforgettable experiences - then I think the SBC Summit becomes something much more powerful than another trade show.

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Soft2Bet and SBC bring the Player Experience Academy to SBC Summit. Join us to explore what's next for player experience.

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