SportsHero at Gamescom 2026: Building the HeroPlay Opportunity

The SportsHero team has wrapped up an extremely productive visit to Gamescom 2026, the world’s largest gaming event and a major business platform for the international games industry. https://www.gamescom.global/en

This year’s Gamescom was bigger than ever, with over 1,700 exhibitors and its 233,000 sqm exhibition space fully booked for the first time, it's estimated there were over ~38,000 trade attendees and ~500,000 general attendees over the 5 days. With exhibitors from 67 countries (around 70% from outside Germany) it provided SportsHero with a valuable opportunity to meet face-to-face with key participants from across the global gaming ecosystem.

For the SportsHero team (Duane Mutu and Adele Sim), the focus was firmly on execution.

Over a few highly productive days, the team advanced several important workstreams supporting the rollout and future development of HeroPlay, including:

·        Progressing the operational and technical steps required to bring gaming vouchers and top-ups live through our recently announced partnership with Carry1st. The respective teams are now personally connected and working through implementation.

·        Holding detailed discussions with gaming, content and technology providers to explore ways to broaden the range of products, games and experiences available through HeroPlay.

·        Exploring additional commerce and payment opportunities that could further strengthen the HeroPlay offering as the platform scales.

·        Advancing discussions around technology and services that could enhance the HeroPlay ecosystem and support its future product roadmap.

Beyond these key priorities, the team held a wide range of meetings across games, content, offers, engagement tools and commerce. These discussions provided valuable insights and will help shape the next stages of the HeroPlay roadmap.

SportsHero COO and Director Adele Sim, who attended the event commented before heading home:

“Gamescom was incredibly productive for us. There’s simply no substitute for getting the right people together face-to-face, and in two days we were able to move forward work that could otherwise have taken months.

What was particularly encouraging was the response to what we’re building with HeroPlay. We came away with a very clear view of the immediate priorities, but also plenty of ideas and opportunities for where we can expand the offering and take the platform in the future. Now it’s about turning that momentum into execution.”

With Gamescom complete, the team’s attention now turns to implementation and the HeroPlay rollout, while continuing to build out the content, commerce and technology ecosystem to support its longer-term growth. And after such a fun and fruitful event, the team are already planning for next year’s event!