Despite a 48-hour strike on the London Underground during the three-day show, last week’s ICE Totally Gaming at ExCeL in London’s Docklands looks likely to set a new attendance record for the event with organisers announcing an unaudited attendance of 23,891 gaming industry professionals.
The figure signifies a seven per cent increase on 2013 and 12 per cent on 2012. Kate Chambers, portfolio director for ICE organiser Clarion Events, said: "I would like to pay tribute to the many thousands of visitors who navigated their way across London using a combination of taxis, cars, buses and even boats to get to the river-fronted ExCeL Centre.
“This says a huge amount about their determination not to have gaming's most important business week of the year ruined by a strike.
"The ICE team also worked tremendously hard to put on an event which reflected the investment made by our visitors and the 503 exhibiting companies which occupied the 55,000sq.m of space at ExCeL.”
Chambers continued: “2014 represented our fifth consecutive year of growth and a 28 per cent uplift on the 18,676 who attended ICE 2010. However, you are only as good as your last event and our job now is to reflect, identify the areas in which we could have done better, continue to do the things we did well and work in partnership with the industry to deliver on behalf of the industry once again in 2015."
