For the latest episode of iGaming Daily, James Ross, SBC’s multimedia editor, was pitchside at the SBC Football Championship, this time held at the home of the Portuguese giants Benfica.

To begin, James spoke to Cara Christie, Senior Event Executive at SBC, about what it takes to put on such an event, especially given the size of this year’s SBC Summit.

She said: “There is a lot of interest in the SBC Football Championships and because we are getting bigger and bigger it is a bit more of a challenge to try and organise it in what small time we have.

“It’s all about making sure that we have everything that we think our clients and our players want. It’s such a busy week and most people do fly in on the Monday, so it’s just doing things that we think can bring them in.

“I think it then gets a little bit tricky when it comes to organising the teams because everyone has such different skill levels and we do want all the teams to be fair so it’s about moving them around into teams.”

On top of all of this, Cara also managed to organise for the former Benfica and Blackburn Rover icon Nuno Gomes to make a surprise appearance at the tournament.

After a short break, a rather more breathless James managed to catch up with executives from Amusnet and Monotech, the sponsors of the tournament, directly after battling it out on the pitch.

On the championship, Slava Chernenko, Head of Commercial and Partnerships at Monotech, said: “One thing I love about the championship, and I’ve played in most of them, is that it is a gateway to the event itself. 

“The whole event is about meeting people, building those communications and the whole industry coming together. What better way to do that than on a football pitch? There are a lot of good people and good teams and it’s an honour to be a main sponsor of the event.”

Amusnet’s Regional Business Development Manager,  Nikola Georgiev, agreed with this sentiment, describing the opportunity to share a football pitch with friends and colleagues from across the industry as “really valuable for all the people that participate each year.”