ICE attendance tops 28,000

(PRESS RELEASE) -- Outline attendance figures for this month's ICE exhibition have been declared at 28,487 unique visitors. The interim figure, a record for the world's biggest business-to-business gaming event, represents a 11.7% increase on the total for 2015 and is the seventh consecutive year of growth for ICE. The attendance data, which has been compiled by the company responsible for registration at ICE 2016, will now undergo an independent audit in order to be confirmed as an accurate figure.

Kate Chambers, who has overseen the development of the ICE brand, including the 2013 move to ExCeL, which is London's largest purpose built events venue, believes the outline figures are a testament to the central role that ICE now plays in world gaming. She stated: "We invited the world of gaming to enter the Gaming Technopolis and they came – in their thousands and from a total of 150 nations.

"Clearly I am delighted that we have secured a double digit increase on 2015, which, itself was a record year for ICE. There's a significant momentum to the event and all of the anecdotal evidence, the media reporting and the messages we are receiving from stakeholders from all over the world is unequivocally positive. I have to place on record my sincere thanks to our 529 exhibitors from 62 nations who worked so hard and with such outstanding creativity to make ICE such a spectacle.

"Putting the figures to one side, which I must stress, still have to be audited, the real measure of success is the experience and feedback we receive from our stakeholders. We conduct extensive customer research after each edition of ICE and I look forward to sharing the results with the industry in due course.

"The most-used cliché in the events industry is 'you are only as good as your last show' and with this in mind we will shortly hold our annual strategy days with the team responsible for organizing ICE and agreeing the content and the campaign to take ICE forward in 2017."