Building more than an event

As this year’s event, NEXT: Valletta, continues to attract thousands of delegates from around the world, Pierre Lindh, Co-founder and Managing Director of NEXT.io, says that he believes the event’s success stems from treating the event as something far bigger than a conference.

“The honest answer is that from the start we treated NEXT: Valletta as a festival, not a conference,” he explains. “Most iGaming events were designed as two days in a hotel ballroom with parties bolted on. We went the other way around.”

The conference itself, hosted at the Mediterranean Conference Centre (MCC), on May 27 - 28, serves as the centrepiece of a much broader experience.

“We built a six-day programme with ice baths at the Saluting Battery, a 5K running club along the Sliema promenade, the rooftop parties, the sport events, and the conference at the MCC as the centrepiece,” Lindh says. “People come to Malta because they get a real experience, not just a badge and an exhibition hall.”

Malta itself, he says, has been an “unfair advantage”.

“The density of operators, suppliers, lawyers, affiliates, payment companies, and regulators within a 30-minute drive does not exist anywhere else in the world,” he says. “You can sit in a meeting at lunch and walk to three more by dinner. We have leaned heavily into that geography. The whole island becomes the venue. That is something only Malta can offer.”

According to Lindh, the impact of an event such as NEXT: Valletta extends well beyond the conference halls.

“When thousands of delegates land in Malta from across the world for a week, the spillover effect is enormous,” he says. “Hotels, restaurants, transport, the airport, local agencies and service providers all see a direct lift.”

Yet he believes the long-term value lies in the strategic conversations taking place behind the scenes.

“The people coming for this week are the same people deciding where to put their next office, where to expand a payments stack, where to base a new vertical like crypto or prediction markets,” he notes. “Many of those decisions get made informally during this week, over a coffee at the Phoenicia or after a panel at the MCC.”

There is also a less tangible but equally important benefit; a softer effect that is harder to measure but maybe more important.

“Malta as a brand gets carried back to head offices in London, Stockholm, Toronto, Manila. The reputation that Malta is the place to be for serious iGaming conversations gets reinforced every year,” Lindh says. “It is one of the few weeks in the year where Malta is genuinely the global capital of our industry.”

Rapid growth often presents businesses with a difficult challenge: how to scale without losing authenticity.

The impact of an event such as NEXT: Valletta extends well beyond the conference halls

“This is something I think about a lot,” he admits. “The most authentic part of any brand is the people behind it, and how genuinely they care about the relationships they are building.”

NEXT.io has expanded from a small startup team into an organisation of around 50 people, but Lindh has intentionally avoided centralising industry relationships within a traditional sales structure.

Instead, employees are encouraged to cultivate their own relationships across different sectors of the industry.

“The other thing we hold firm on is that we do not pretend to know what we do not know,” Lindh adds. “When we got our paid content strategy wrong last year, we publicly reversed course. Honesty is a competitive advantage in an industry that is used to a lot of spin.”

Running an event as extensive as NEXT: Valletta brings significant operational challenges. Behind the scenes, the logistics are substantial.

“Our project manager Maria runs the show, and she tells me my job during the week is to be the mascot and not get in the way. She is mostly right,” he smiles.

Strategically, however, Lindh believes the greater challenge is not growth itself but maintaining discipline.

“There is constant pressure to add more, more delegates, more stages, more sponsor activations,” he says. “But bigger is not always better. The version of NEXT: Valletta we keep coming back to is intimate, curated, where the right people are in the right rooms. That gets harder as you scale. So, a lot of our hardest decisions are about what to say no to.”

As for the future, Lindh believes Malta must focus on three priorities if it wishes to maintain its competitive edge.

“First, talent. Malta has built a strong tech and gaming workforce, but we are competing globally for the same people,” he says. “We need to make it easier for the best operators, engineers, lawyers and product people to come and stay. That is a combination of immigration, housing, infrastructure, and frankly quality of life. The companies we work with all talk about it.”

Infrastructure is another area requiring attention.

“Malta has stretched a lot in the last decade and we are now seeing the cracks, the traffic, the road quality, the airport at peak times,” he notes. “These things shape the first impression for the visitor and the operator deciding where to expand.”

Finally, he believes Malta must take greater ownership of its international narrative.

“The reality is that the MGA, the operators here, and the broader ecosystem have grown enormously, and the regulatory rigour is at a much higher standard than the international press often gives credit for,” Lindh says. “We need to be more confident in telling that story and shaping the narrative, rather than reacting to it. We are at the start of something much bigger than we have ever been. “

That vision includes the launch of NEXTPredict, expansion of flagship summits in Valletta and New York, and the development of specialised industry communities, building a community model that goes deeper than events.

“The next few years will be about turning NEXT.io from an events business into a true media and community platform that the industry leans on every day, not just twice a year.”