iGaming tech leader Cristina Turbatu hails ICE Barcelona’s vision for Hall 7

• Cristina Turbatu, a long-standing iGaming chief executive with over a decade of experience, spoke about ICE Barcelona’s Hall 7
• Hall 7 was a shift from the traditional messaging of the event, bringing companies together to work on technological solutions
• Turbatu hailed this format as a way for true and honest collaboration, solving real issues that businesses face together

Cristina Turbatu, an iGaming visionary and sector leader, has commended ICE Barcelona’s Hall 7 and celebrated it as a driver of real change in how the industry runs events. Turbatu is no iGaming minnow, having served as CTO at Casumo and BeyondPlay, and as Head of Playtech’s Innovation Lab, with more than 14 years of experience.

"The idea of getting technologists in a room to advise on what content and format would actually bring value to Hall 7 attendees is a real change in how this industry runs events," she stated. "The Advisory Board has been looking at audience types, having a lot of discussions about the format of each slot in the day, and asking at every point what actionable value someone actually walks away with," Turbatu said.

Turbatu remarked how Hall 7 broke the mold around ICE and industry events, with the gathering traditionally focusing on commercial goals and values. In contrast, Hall 7 was a step in a completely different direction - a place where companies came together to innovate, fix existing problems, and get advice on problems that they currently face.

"Having both the B2B and B2C perspective on the Advisory Board matters because those are the people who actually need this event to exist," she noted, adding that technology played a key role in crucial aspects of the experience, including addressing relevant questions of player protection.

"The difference today is that we can be proactive. We track behaviour continuously, the patterns are detected as they form rather than in a monthly report, and the alert reaches someone who can act on it while the player is still in the session," Turbatu continued.

Turbatu argued that Hall 7 was where companies came to be specific, arguing that panels had to stay general because people couldn’t be specific about their own companies and had to offer broad questions - this was different in Hall 7, however.

"Most operators already know what the technology can do. What they haven't seen is it running with the compliance, the audit trail, and the uptime expectations attached, and without that it sits on the maybe list for another year. Seeing it work somewhere comparable is usually what moves it into implementation," she noted, arguing that it was a matter of working through some of the surrounding issues around technology implementation and not understanding the tech itself.

"Bringing technical leaders into the heart of this fast-paced industry creates the ideal environment to learn and apply new ideas.

Hall 7 will allow transformation managers to attend a session, meet the vendor on the floor, and discuss honest migration costs with peers. Success isn't about choosing the technology; it's about the sequencing, uptime, and team motivation, which is shared by word of mouth at events such as ICE Barcelona," she concluded.

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