Gaming Intelligence has announced its shortlists for the Gaming Intelligence Awards 2016. Applications were open until November 2015 and the winners will be announced on the ICE Totally Gaming conference in London, same as last year.

The Gaming Intelligence was held for the first time in 2015. It was quite a memorable event with Playtech (who are leading the charts this year as well) and bet365 winning two awards each thus being the leaders of that ceremony. The awards are a logical continuation to the trust and popularity the editorial of Gaming Intelligence have built over the years and aim to deliver the same to its readers with the selection of top operators and business from the world of gaming.
The awards are given in the following main categories.

The Industry Elite

Here are the big players of the game, picked by their performance of previous years and by the expectations from them for the coming year. Even though you would think you’d be seeing the same names here, last year held a surprise – a relatively new brand made it to the top of the Elite, proving that it is not impossible and it is still a highly competitive field, making it really hard to stay at the top and giving hope for newcomers like Baazov (CEO of Amaya).

The Next Generation

These are the companies you should be keeping an eye on (or work for!). The big-players-to-be consists of 50 hot names in the gaming industry that are just on the edge of success. Some of them we will sure hear about more in the years to come, others will no doubt be gone in an instance – in any case, what goes on in the meantime should be interesting.

Backstage Heroes

I am personally a huge fan of that category. It is to the people that you will not see in interviews or on any publications, likely their names are not known to many at all, even more so to the average player. But without them the whole gaming industry would not exist – the legal teams, customer and staff managers, sales executives and not only, techy people – the wheels of that enormous and amazing machine that we are at the receiving end of. This for me is where the awards are most deserved.

Upstarts & Explorers

This category is for the potential big players, similar to the Next Generation category but for total start-ups – the majority of those names won’t make it but then some just might so it is even more interesting to watch it happen. 3-4 yrears ago the example from above – Amaya’s Baazov would’ve been here.
Hold your breath, winners to be announced soon! Keep checking on us, we will sure keep you posted!