This SiGMA Europe exhibition stand was built for UPGAMING, the Swiss iGaming software house, around a column that nobody could move.
Client UPGAMING · Show SiGMA Europe 2023, Malta Maritime Hub, Marsa · Dates 14–16 November 2023 · Area 70 m² (plot 1051, 10 × 7 m) · Sector iGaming software
A column in the middle of the plot, and nothing allowed to hang
SiGMA Europe fills the old maritime sheds at Marsa with some of the loudest stands in any industry. iGaming software companies sell to operators who spend their working lives looking at screens, and the hall shows it: LED edges, video walls and giant logos competing across every aisle. A SiGMA Europe exhibition stand has to hold its own in that noise.
However, plot 1051 came with two conditions that cut straight across that kind of design. A steel stanchion, one of the columns that holds up the shed, stood inside the plot, 3.9 m in from one side and 1.7 m from the other. Moreover, the SiGMA exhibitor manual is blunt on the second point: no rigging is allowed on any exhibitor’s booth. Nothing hangs from the roof. Every screen, every sign and every overhead frame has to stand on its own structure.
Most stands treat a column as something to hide. On this one, instead, the column became the spine of the stand.
| Element | As built |
|---|---|
| Area | 70 m², plot 1051 on the Shed 2 side, 10 × 7 m |
| Core | The venue column enclosed in a black tower carrying the UPGAMING mark and a screen, with storage inside |
| Structure | Self-supporting steel frame, 3 mm sections, clad in 8 mm timber panels — no rigging points |
| Header | Hexagonal illuminated fascia: Sportsbook Software, Casino Software, Casino API, Sportsbook Solution |
| Light | Cyan LED lines on every faceted pillar, backlit ceiling strips, light rings set into the floor |
| Hospitality | Forward reception counter, bar-height tables and football-styled egg chairs |
Turning the column into the core
The organiser’s drawing for plot 1051 shows the stanchion with safe-maximum dimensions for free-standing walls around it, and a warning: anything fastened to the column itself needs written permission and your own measurements on site. However, a second note, in orange on the same sheet, is the one that shapes the design. A high-voltage distribution box sits on the column and must stay accessible at all times — at least a metre clear in front of it, and an unlocked door if you enclose it.
Therefore the core is a box around the column, not a fixing to it. It stands on its own frame, wraps the stanchion with the clearance the venue requires, keeps a door to the electrical box, and uses the space left over as the stand’s store. As a result, from the aisle it reads as a tall black tower with the UPGAMING mark on every face and a screen above it. Nobody standing on the stand would guess there is a piece of the building inside it.
A hexagon that holds itself up
With no rigging, the floor had to carry everything overhead. The header is a hexagonal frame that rests on the core and on angled pillars at the corners, each pillar faceted like a cut stone and edged in cyan LED. In fact, the pillars do the structural work and the branding work at once: the light lines run the eye upward to the product names on the header.
First, the engineers drew the frame in front, side and plan sections before anyone cut a panel, because on this stand the steel, not the roof, carries every screen. The rules leave room for ambition — SiGMA lets a stand built around a column rise to 8 m against 4 m for a standard booth, provided anything above 4 m is backed by a signed and stamped structural engineering certificate. Still, the point of the engineering here was not height for its own sake. It was a header that reads from across the shed without a single cable to the ceiling.
Built once in the workshop, then again in Malta
The design drawings are dated 25 October 2023. Three days later the whole frame was standing in the workshop — core, header ring and faceted pillars assembled in raw timber so every joint and every angle could be checked before anything was finished, wired or crated.
That dry build, in other words, is what made Malta predictable, and Malta needed to be predictable. Contractors who are not SiGMA’s official builders get into the sheds from Friday 10 November, and the build closes at 14:00 on Monday 13 November, the day before the expo opens. In addition, the organiser registers every person on the crew by name before arrival, marshals guide every vehicle in and out of the hub, and walls facing a neighbour must be at least 2.5 m high and dressed above 2.4 m in a plain neutral colour. As a result, the crew assembled nothing at Marsa for the first time.
A SiGMA Europe exhibition stand planned for a crowd
Above all, the plan is open on three sides. The reception counter sits forward under the Casino Software header and the sportsbook zone holds the opposite corner, so a visitor arriving from either aisle meets the product they came for first. Meanwhile, bar-height tables line the edges for the short conversations that make up most of a gaming expo. The football egg chairs are there for the longer ones — and because a stand selling a sportsbook ought to look like it.
Finally, the light rings in the floor do more than they appear to. In a hall that dark and that loud, they mark where the stand begins and pull people across the threshold.
Services delivered
- Concept development and 3D visualisation
- Structural drawings for a self-supporting steel frame, with no rigging
- Workshop fabrication and full dry assembly before shipping
- LED lighting, illuminated signage and screen integration
- Organiser compliance: plot and stanchion drawing, electrical order, contractor registration
- Freight to Malta, installation and dismantling at the Malta Maritime Hub
- On-site project management through build, show and breakdown
Frequently asked questions
Do you build a SiGMA Europe exhibition stand in Malta?
Yes. This 70 m² stand was built for SiGMA Europe 2023 at the Malta Maritime Hub in Marsa. We work through the organiser’s exhibitor manual, plot drawings, electrical orders and contractor registration as part of the job.
Can you design a stand around a venue column?
Yes. Here the column became the core of the stand: enclosed with the clearance the venue requires, with the electrical box kept accessible, and the remaining space used as storage.
What happens when a venue does not allow rigging?
Everything overhead has to stand on its own frame. At SiGMA the hexagonal header and the screens were carried by a self-supporting steel structure designed and dry-assembled for exactly that.