Games London Announces Summer Business Hub For The Global Gaming Industry

Mumbai: Games London has one mission — to make London the games capital of the world. The ongoing pandemic, that has populations around the world staying at home to follow social distancing, has sparked fresh interest in gaming globally. In order to facilitate connections between gamers, investors, and companies across the world, Games London has announced a brand new virtual B2B event —Summer Business Hub — that will go live from 8.a.m. to midnight BST on Wednesday 15 & Thursday 16 July 2020.

The Summer Business Hub is a free-to-participate event focused on one-to-one meetings between delegates of the gaming industry, developers of gaming content, and investors. Participants can pitch meetings with each other and make introductions via video and voice calls. They can also take part in multiple online panel discussions and roundtable conferences with partners to discuss London’s games ecosystem.

“Games and interactive entertainment have proven to be lucrative pastimes throughout the global lockdown. However, in the absence of global business development events, it’s getting harder for new games and games businesses to receive funding and access to investors. The Summer Business Hub builds on the success of the world’s first online-only games events this year — the 2020 London Games Festival — and we hope to welcome games creators and investors from around the world to connect and do business.” said Michael French, Head of Games London.

With the UK market for video games valued at £5.35bn in 2019, major companies are enthusiastic to meet and collaborate with upcoming game developers to innovate. More than 20 key companies and VCs have already signed up for the mega event including Sky, AVM, LVP, Perfect World, LEGO Ventures, Play Ventures, Sega, and Kowloon Nights. The collective budget between these companies is £100m. In addition to connecting with investment funds and lenders, delegates can also meet publishers who are ready to work with pre-production studios, nearly finished games, and titles needing a re-release.

Games London has also lined up experts for free, office-hours mentoring sessions and plans to organize a handful of meetings for each participating company with games studios and investors, tapping into their extensive contact book of people from the gaming sector.

The Summer Business Hub builds on the success of the 2020 digital-only London Games Festival in April which featured four days of B2B meetings with 400 companies representing 35 countries, generating over £12 million in business deals.

“The popularity of online gaming and interactive entertainment has really taken off during the coronavirus pandemic. The market value of the gaming industry in India was reported to be £664mn in 2019, and the figure is expected to grow to over £2.7bn by 2024. Upcoming Indian game developers have an amazing opportunity to connect with people in this industry, globally. With its diverse gaming talent pool, access to capital, global brand infrastructure and tax benefits that are among the world’s most competitive, London is the ideal city to host a mega virtual event like the Summer Business Hub. This one event converges the entire gaming world onto a single platform of such scale and helps connect businesses looking to expand in the gaming sector.” said Hemin Bharucha, Chief Representative-India, London & Partners.