Each autumn, SBC Summit turns Lisbon into the gambling industry's biggest meeting point for a few days — operators, regulators, payment providers and affiliates, all in the same halls. The 2026 edition ran from 29 September to 1 October at the Feira Internacional de Lisboa (FIL) and MEO Arena, the event's third year in the city. Three things from this year's edition are worth knowing even if you weren't in the room.
Organizers put attendance at around 40,000 delegates from more than 150 countries, with final numbers still being confirmed at the time of writing. Visitor numbers have grown steadily each year: the 2026 edition built on a 2025 one that already drew people from 150 countries, 22 more than in 2024. Lisbon's tourism authority estimates attendees booked roughly 85,000 room nights this year. The event isn't going anywhere, either — SBC has confirmed it will return to the same venues, FIL and MEO Arena, on 21–23 September 2027. The headline keynote, "Leadership in Sports Business" at MEO Arena, featured Michael Jordan alongside Sportradar CEO Carsten Koerl and DraftKings CEO Jason Robins, moderated by Kirsty Gallacher — a sign of how closely the sports and betting industries are now intertwined.
AI was a running theme across the week, but the tone had shifted from experimentation toward deployment. SOFTSWISS presented its 2027 iGaming Trends report at the summit, and the company's Chief AI Officer, Denis Romanovskiy, said the clearest gains so far have come in internal productivity — roughly 20-50%, by his estimate — rather than the 2x-10x leaps some vendors promise. He pointed to AI's role in cutting the cost of supporting both operators and players, while noting that adoption going forward will be shaped as much by internal organization and regulation as by the technology itself.
The Affiliate Leaders Summit launched in 2024 as a zone inside SBC Summit; in 2026 it broke out into a standalone, co-located event for affiliates, media groups, creators, affiliate networks and operator acquisition teams. Organizers pointed to strong growth behind the move: the exhibition floor grew 40% and affiliate registrations rose nearly 50% year-over-year in 2025. This year's edition drew more than 10,000 delegates and over 150 exhibitors across a 15,000 sqm floor, with sessions on geo-expansion, compliance in regulated markets, AI-driven optimization, attribution and first-party data — plus a new three-day Affiliate Leaders Academy covering SEO, emerging channels and data management. For an affiliate comparison site like this one, it's arguably the single most relevant stage at the whole event.
One of the more structurally significant announcements had nothing to do with slots or odds. SBC and the Gaming Regulators Africa Forum (GRAF) announced a strategic partnership aimed at strengthening regulatory dialogue and knowledge exchange across African gaming markets. GRAF, whose president is Reuben Mabutho Zwane, becomes an official Event Partner of the African Gaming Forum, a track added inside SBC Summit covering market entry, regulatory frameworks, taxation and responsible gambling. The forum's regulatory panel, "African Gaming Under the Microscope," brought together regulators including Moruntshi Kemorwale (Gambling Authority of Botswana), Lungile Dukwana (South Africa's National Gambling Board), Emmanuel Siisi Quainoo (Gaming Commission of Ghana), Peter Maina Karimi (Kenya's Gaming Regulatory Authority), Muchanankhwaye Mpuluka (Malawi Gaming & Lotteries Authority) and Bashir Are (Lagos State Lotteries and Gaming Authority). SBC also said it will support GRAF's own 2026 conference, held in September in Maputo, Mozambique. SBC CEO Rasmus Sojmark framed the goal as putting African regulators "at the centre" of conversations about the continent's gaming future.
Most readers comparing casinos and sportsbooks online will never attend SBC Summit, but the direction of these conversations tends to filter down. More formal dialogue between regulators — in Africa and elsewhere — usually means clearer licensing rules and more consistent player-protection requirements over time, even if it takes longer than one conference season to show up in any single country's rules. And a bigger, more competitive affiliate industry is, in principle, one more reason operators have to keep their bonus terms and comparison data accurate, since sites like this one are part of what gets scrutinized at events like this too.