There is no great desire among the leading exhibitors at the European Amusement and Gaming Expo to move dates to coincide with the ICE Totally Gaming show in 2013.
EAG is scheduled for January 29-31 in 2013 at the ExCel exhibition centre in London’s Docklands. News of the starting of rebuilding work at Earls Court forced ICE promoter Clarion to pinpoint dates for its event also at ExCel but a week later, February 5-7.
Some visitors and much of the foreign trade press, has assumed that EAG will now simply move its dates to co-incide because of the traditional overlap of products, but this has been resisted by the bulk of the EAG exhibitors.
John McKenzie, Managing Director of Namco Europe, told InterGame today: “As manufacturers we need as much reasonable time to prepare our products and sales for the season ahead. Delaying the show by another week would make it more difficult to release our products in time for Easter.
“Yes it would perhaps be advantageous for ICE to be with us at the same venue and time but I am not sure there is much overlap in customers between the two shows. It would create a buzz I feel sure, but this should be secondary to the direct needs of the manufacturers at EAG…in short if ICE is held in January then ok but EAG should not move just to coincide with ICE.”
