Now that the smoke has cleared over the inaugural SportHackTag event, the numbers of Europe’s first event focused on digital innovation in the sports world are as impressive as the long list of clubs, organisations and agencies that converged on the Emirates on 24 and 25 May.

A brain child of two leading Italian agencies in the field of sports business, GEA World and Minimega Pubblicita, the event gave the opportunity to meet and analyze a range of best practices, organize one-to-one meetings and eventually develop new business opportunities.

The event saw over 250 meetings arranged for clubs and companies, 15 key-note speakers of worldwide importance. Numbers released by official social media partners Snack Media suggest the overwhelming success of the first ever event. The official event Twitter handle reached over 36,000 users, achieving 1.3 million impressions, whereas #Sporthacktag was trending during the first day of the event with it achieving a social reach of 569,000 users and an overall 8.5 million impressions.

President of Gea World Alessandro Moggi said that the event was a win for everyone involved.

“We are hugely proud to be the first Italian company to create such a groundbreaking international format. We took the challenge to innovate amongst the innovators,” he said.

“We are delighted we managed to create business and network opportunities as well as solid relationships between the major players in the digital arena. We chose London and the exclusive location of the Emirates Stadium to launch the first edition of an event which considers the international dimension as one of Sporthacktag’s key milestones. The second edition, is scheduled to be held in Dubai next March 2017, where we hope we will be able to host an even bigger number of participants and industry specialists, reaching a far wider global audience”.