September was a blur. A good one. And it went fast.
Three conferences in eleven days. AWSummit in Bucharest. TES in Prague. SBC Summit in Lisbon.
Different rooms, different crowds, different rules. Same mission, as alwayws: figure out where affiliate traffic is heading.
The team split the load again. Nobody did all three. Here’s how it went, stop by stop.
Stop 1: AWSummit Bucharest (September 21-23)
Bucharest kicked things off. Our Head of BizDev, Robert Ivan, and our Head of Affiliates, David Stadoleanu, represented Reacheffect on the ground.
AWSummit (@awsummit) is built for affiliates and content creators. This was its 13th edition in Romania, and it ran three full days.
The numbers: 3,000+ attendees from 110+ countries, according to the organizers.
The show is multi-vertical. eCommerce, nutra, iGaming and adult all share the same floor. You get keynotes, workshops, masterminds, an expo and a packed networking schedule.
The venue was the Face Convention Center. It’s one of Bucharest’s biggest event spaces, with room for 3,000+ international delegates.
The crowd leans toward media buyers and creators. Think less boardroom, more traffic talk. The speaker lineup included buyers managing seven figures a month across Meta and native.
For us, this stop was about the supply and demand match. With BizDev and the affiliate side in the same room, we could line up advertisers and publishers on the spot.
Stop 2: TES Prague (September 25-28)
Prague had our biggest delegation of the run. Eran Goldshmid (CEO), Ziv Noy (COO) and Gabriel Moise (BizDev Director) all made the trip.
TES ran four days at the Diplomat Hotel Prague. The hotel is also the venue. So you sleep, meet and network under one roof. No taxis between sessions.
The scale: roughly 1,700 to 2,000 attendees and around 80 speakers, based on estimates from media partners.
TES started in the adult and entertainment space. It has since grown into ecommerce, finance and nutra.
The real draw is the Meet Market. It’s a table-based format where you sit down with advertisers, networks and publishers in scheduled slots. Fewer random hallway chats. More actual conversations.
There’s also an expo floor, a full seminar track and nightly parties. Prague does a good job of mixing business with a long evening.
It’s a smaller crowd than Lisbon. That’s the point. You get more face time with each person.
With our CEO, COO and BizDev Director at the same event, we could cover a lot of tables in four days.
Stop 3: SBC Summit Lisbon (September 29 – October 1)
Prague closed on the 28th. Lisbon opened on the 29th. No days off.
Ziv Noy (COO) went straight from one to the other. Avi Ilinsky (CMO) joined him in Lisbon.
SBC Summit took over the Feira Internacional de Lisboa (FIL) and the MEO Arena in Parque das Nações. This was its third year in the city.
The scale: organizers expected 40,000 attendees from 150+ countries. Around 800 exhibitors and sponsors filled four halls. More than 600 speakers worked across five conference stages, plus tech academies and masterclasses.
The floor is split into themed zones: iGaming, casino, sports betting and payments. The Affiliate Leaders Summit runs alongside it. That one matters a lot for a network like ours.
Side events included the Global Prediction Markets Forum and the African Gaming Forum.
The Super Stage was the headline act. Michael Jordan sat down with DraftKings CEO Jason Robins and Sportradar founder Carsten Koerl to talk sports, data and fan engagement.
The closing party at the MEO Arena had Tiësto and Blasterjaxx. Lisbon doesn’t do small.
For us, this was the regulated iGaming and payments check-in. With the COO and CMO on the ground, we covered both the partnership side and the marketing side.
The Run at a Glance
- AWSummit Bucharest: September 21-23, Face Convention Center. Affiliates and creators, multi-vertical.
- TES Prague: September 25-28, Diplomat Hotel. Meet Market format, 1,700-2,000 attendees.
- SBC Summit Lisbon: September 29 – October 1, FIL and MEO Arena. 40,000 expected, five stages.
What the Run Taught Us
Three conferences, three very different jobs. A few things held true across all of them.
Every room has a purpose. Bucharest is for traffic and creators. Prague is for meetings. Lisbon is for scale, regulated iGaming and payments. Pick the room based on the goal.
Meetings beat panels. The Meet Market in Prague and the side events around Lisbon are where partnerships actually start. The main stage sets the topic. The small rooms close the deal.
Verticals keep blending. Nutra, ecommerce, fintech and iGaming now share stages, speakers and traffic. A buyer in one vertical is often running campaigns in three.
Affiliates have their own seat now. SBC runs a dedicated Affiliate Leaders Summit. Five years ago that would’ve been a side room.
New verticals are showing up on the agenda. Payments are a core zone at SBC, and prediction markets got their own forum. We’re watching both.
Back-to-back is brutal. Eleven days, three countries, a lot of coffee. Worth it, though.
Next Up
We’re not slowing down. If you run traffic in these regions and weren’t in the room, you missed conversations that’ll shape the next two quarters.
For a network like Reacheffect, this kind of ground-level intel decides where we point traffic next. Three cities, eleven days, and a much clearer picture of where the industry is headed.
AWSummit also heads to Koh Chang, Thailand, December 12-15, if you want an early look at the next one.
See you at the next stop.
