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ICE Barcelona is always a pulse-check on where the industry is heading. This year, it felt more like a turning point.
Across three packed days on the XP stand, one theme kept coming up again and again: loyalty and gamification are NOT add-ons, they’re central to what real-time CRM should look like in practice.
Here’s what unfolded on the XP stand at ICE Barcelona 2026.
XP Loyalty Takes Centre Stage
ICE marked the first major opportunity to launch and demo XP Loyalty live on the show floor and the response spoke for itself.
Operators stopped by to see what loyalty looks like when it’s:
- Native to the CRM
- Real-time, not batch-driven
- Fully connected to player behaviour, journeys, and gamification mechanics
Instead of talking about points in isolation, conversations quickly moved to how loyalty events trigger omnichannel journeys, how rewards adapt in real time, and how teams can finally measure loyalty impact inside the same platform they use every day.
Loyalty Built by Loyalty Experts
One of the highlights on the stand was welcoming Dan Taren, Founder of Scrimmage, now part of the XP team.
Having Dan on the stand brought the loyalty conversation to life, not just from a product perspective, but from years of hands-on experience building loyalty technology that actually works at scale.
These conversations went deeper than feature lists or checklists. They were on:
- What modern loyalty needs to support
- Why static programmes fail
- How real-time decisioning changes retention outcomes
Happy Hour Conversations That Mattered
ICE wasn’t just about demos for us, it was also about the conversations that happen once the screens go dark.
Our XP happy hour brought together operators, partners, and industry peers for relaxed, honest discussions about:
-
What’s broken in today’s CRM stacks
-
Where loyalty is heading
-
How teams can move faster without adding more tools
Just real talk, good company, and a shared understanding of where the industry needs to go next.
The Big Shift We Saw at the Stand
Across demos, discussions, and drop-ins, one shift was unmistakable.
The industry is moving from:
Loyalty and Gamification as features
to
True, real-time CRM unification in practice
Operators weren’t asking if loyalty should be connected to CRM anymore they’re asking how quickly it can happen, and how deeply it can be embedded into live player journeys.
That’s exactly the problem XP Loyalty is built to solve.
Our Director of Gamification and Loyalty, Ross O’Connor, put it perfectly:
“ICE Barcelona was a defining moment for XP Loyalty. Loyalty quickly became one of the most talked-about topics on our stand, with operators clearly recognising the value of having it natively embedded into a real-time CRM. ICE gave us strong validation that the market is ready to move beyond fragmented stacks toward a more unified engagement approach.”
Until Next Year 👋
ICE Barcelona once again proved why it’s one of the most important moments in the iGaming calendar and we’re already looking forward to being back next year, even closer.
If you didn’t get a chance to stop by the stand, or want to explore XP Loyalty in more detail, we’d love to continue the conversation.
Book a demo and see XP Loyalty in action
