ICE Gaming Barcelona was chaos in the best possible way—55,000 people navigating an endless maze of booths, marketing gimmicks, and vendors all fighting for the same thing: attention.
And for the most part, they were all doing it the same way.
You’ve seen it before. The oversized swag. The flashing screens. The same pitches, slightly reworded, at booth after booth. By the second day, you could close your eyes and still know exactly what every vendor was going to say.
That’s the challenge in gaming, casinos, sportsbooks, and lotteries. Everyone is running the same playbook. The same promotions. The same strategies. The same battle for eyeballs in a world where consumers have already learned to tune most of it out.
So how do you actually break through?
By Refusing to Be Part of the Noise
That’s why the biggest names in gaming—Caesars Sportsbook & Casino, BetMGM, Tipico, Jackpot City, Jackpot.com, Jackpocket, and the New York Lottery—work with OpenFortune. They know that in a crowded space, the answer isn’t to yell louder. It’s to do something that makes people stop.
And that’s exactly what we did at ICE Gaming.
While everyone else was throwing another generic marketing activation into the mix, we took a different approach.
We didn’t just set up a booth. We built a massive fortune cookie case and had people guess how many were inside. It was simple, it was absurd, and it worked. Because people love a game, even when it’s ridiculous.
We didn’t just hand out business cards. We set up a live podcast studio and had real conversations with some of the most interesting minds in the industry. Instead of trying to force meetings, we created a reason for people to sit down and engage.
And we didn’t just hope people would remember us. We made sure they did, by going around the convention with a bag full of fortune cookies and doing things no one else was doing.
We proposed to attendees with fortune cookies. Some laughed. Some played along. Some gave us a look that said, “You’re out of your mind.”
We pulled off man-on-the-street interviews, pranks, and ridiculous bits that made people smile and gave people something they actually wanted to talk about.
Because when every booth is blending together, the only way to be remembered is to do something unexpected. It was a demonstration of exactly what we do for the biggest brands in gaming: turn an overlooked medium into a high-impact moment that sticks.
The Results Speak for Themselves
This isn’t just a theory. Fortune cookie advertising is already delivering real, measurable impact for the biggest players in the industry.
When BetMGM partnered with OpenFortune to promote their new brand ambassador, Jamie Foxx, they didn’t just run another ad campaign. They put their message inside fortune cookies, leading to 32,000+ searches for BetMGM and a 5.9% social sharing rate—unheard of for an offline marketing channel.
Jackpocket took a similar approach to position itself as the go-to lottery app, and the results were undeniable. OpenFortune helped distribute nearly one million fortune cookies in key markets, and the impact was immediate:
78% of consumers said they were more likely to use Jackpocket
69% recalled the brand unaided
25% kept the fortune slip—a retention rate far beyond traditional advertising.
And that’s why they work with us.
Because a fortune cookie in someone’s hand is better than a billboard they’ll forget before the cab ride home. Because smart, simple, creative marketing beats another round of the same old strategies.
And because at a 55,000-person conference where everyone is competing for the same thing, the only real way to win is to stop playing by the same rules.
Watch the full ICE recap and see for yourself.
