In today’s newsletter:

• Opportunities & Updates

  • Production Company Roll-Up

  • Small-Midsize Event Agency Acquisition

  • Mastermind Group for Event Biz Owners

• Takeaways from the Event Agency C-Suite Dinner

  • Collective Catharsis

  • A Broken Pitch Process

  • Charging for Proposals?

  • Benchmarking Rates

  • Talent & Remote Work

  • AI Challenges & Opportunities

  • Where Are the 2026 World Cup Events?

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Opportunities & Updates

Roll-Up Opportunity for Production Companies

I’m advising an event production company (creative, scenic, fabrication, staging, lighting, sound, etc.) that is leading a roll-up. We’re looking for companies with around $1-2M in EBITDA, clean financials, reasonably predictable revenue, and whose owners are aligned with the roll-up vision. To learn more, email me here.

Event Agency Acquisition Opportunity

I’m working with a meeting & event agency looking to acquire one or more smaller agencies (Adjusted EBITDA of under $1M) as part of their growth strategy. Ideal target agencies should demonstrate strength across key event planning competencies to include some or all the following: Sourcing, Event Logistics & Management, Creative & Production, Event Tech, Onsite Staffing, Air Support - Individual & Group. To confidentially explore this opportunity, please call or email me.

Mastermind Group for Event Business Owners

In response to some of the feedback a number of you have shared, I’m gauging interest for a new Mastermind Group for owners of event businesses looking to support each other in taking their companies to the next level. We’d meet once a month over six months for three hours, where participants would take turns in the ‘hot seat’ sharing challenges and opportunities they want feedback on. In between group meetings I’d have 1:1 calls with everyone to troubleshoot issues and help them stay on track. We’d need the right mix of at least 6-8 companies to make it work. Interested? Shoot me a note.

Takeaways From the Event Agency C-Suite Dinner

Collective Catharsis

Last week I co-hosted an Event Agency C-Suite Dinner & Roundtable in NYC, bringing together a diverse group of leaders to discuss the challenges & opportunities facing their companies and the broader event industry, exchange ideas, and deepen their peer support networks.

The experience was a collective catharsis. Participants were eager to vent and be heard, to have their experiences validated, to bask in a community of true peers after toiling for so long in their own silos. It’s been a long five years since Covid hit, and it feels like every time our industry finds solid ground, another tidal wave knocks us off our feet. This time it’s economic & geo-political headwinds, the blistering pace of AI advancement, rapidly shifting budgets, and increasingly compressed planning cycles, to name a few.

The last time we felt the ground shift like this, in early Covid, I organized a private discussion group called The Situation Room, where even agency owners came together to help each other navigate the seismic changes facing their companies and the industry. A similar group called Nineteen was organized in London by Chetan Shah, Founder & CEO of Micebook, so we teamed up to co-host this dinner together.

My plan was that after introductions we'd have some full group discussion, then let people chat amongst themselves. But once the group conversation began there was no stopping that train.

Everyone was It was almost uncanny how much everyone has been struggling with the same issues, regardless of their agencies' size, location, client base, service offerings and other differences may have separated them. As business owners we all think everyone else has their sh*t figured out, but in a safe environment where people were able to be vulnerable and open up, we found that no one has all the answers.

Below is a breakdown of the key takeaways.

A Broken Pitch Process

Perhaps the single topic that elicited universal agreement was around challenges with the RFP process. Much of the blame was directed at procurement departments for not understanding how creative services live event strategy and experience design can’t be commoditized like office supplies, though the clients themselves drove much of the frustration as well.

Too Many Bidders

The number of agencies being asked to pitch on a given project seems to keep increasing, with one leader sharing an email from a prospective client who said they were asking a whopping 20 agencies to bid. Of course, no one is forcing an agency to submit a proposal if they’re facing such daunting odds. But what hit hardest was the feeling that asking so many companies to bid was disrespectful to those companies, and not appreciative of the time and effort that goes into crafting a quality proposal.

Stealing Ideas

In addition, a surprisingly high number of people at the table reported having lost a bid only to later see their exact ideas and concepts executed by another agency. I really thought we’d moved on from this as an industry, but apparently not, so let me be crystal clear to anyone considering this: Taking an agency’s ideas and giving them to someone else to execute is not only grossly unethical, it’s also illegal. This is IP theft, plain and simple.

Charging for Proposals?

This led to discussion of whether agencies should charge a proposal fee. Doing so would be a big step toward discouraging the practice of having too many companies bidding on a project and would force clients to be more judicious in whom they send their RFPs to. There could be a two-tiered proposal fee system, with a small fee for the work that goes into a pitch, and a larger fee for the client to own the ideas. The latter option effectively bifurcates the creative and execution work, effectively allowing clients to pay one company for design and another for logistics.

Of course, this only works if enough agencies adopt the policy of charging for proposals. Without critical mass, most firms will be afraid to be priced out of the opportunity. To get there, the larger and more established agencies would need to take the lead, because clients need to have some of the top players participate in their RFP process as part of their due diligence. Charging for proposals would have the added benefit of producing more create concepts, as agencies would be willing to invest more resources in their proposals because of the commitment the client is showing.

The Commoditization of Event Services

The broken proposal process indicates that as a sector we still struggle to show the true value of events, and the value our firms bring to the table in creating and executing those events. When someone mentioned this, they got a universal chorus of agreement. This all stems from a weakness in being able to effectively measure event ROI, the holy grail of our industry.

Developing Your Own Events

Several people brought up the idea of creating our own events, and investing in developing IP that we don’t just produce, but own outright. I’ve written in the past about how Heather Mason of Caspian Agency did this in building her Impact Lounge series, and Rebecca Linder of Linder Global Events similarly started their own Linder Labs, but those examples are few and far between.

Benchmarking Rates

One participant pointed out that the senior in-house event leaders at companies in the financial sector meet regularly to exchange ideas, including comparing agency costs. Another knew about a similar group in the tech sector. “If they’re getting together to share ideas, costs, and best practices, we should be doing the same,” they said.

One area where agency leaders would benefit from such collaboration is in benchmarking the rates they charge clients for various roles, when they bill by time. The Nineteen group did such a benchmarking survey to its members, and shared the results, enabling agencies to compare their rates with industry averages, and providing proof of pricing integrity to show clients who can then share with their procurement colleagues. This is something we’d like to do here in the U.S.

Talent & Remote Work

Recruiting, nurturing and retaining top talent became a critical concern in 2022, when business flooded back after Covid to an industry that had recently gutted its workforce. It seems to still be a challenge for several reasons, one of which is how to integrate remote or hybrid workers into a company’s culture, particularly for entry level employees trying to learn the industry, or even more senior professionals who are new to the company.

Some agencies at the table were fully remote, others mandate anywhere from two to four days a week in the office. “Something’s just missing when we’re not working together,” one owner who requires four days in the office said. “You can’t quantify the value of all those little interactions, when someone sticks their head into a co-worker’s office to bounce an idea off them, or someone overhears a colleague on a difficult call and immediately offers a supportive shoulder to lean on. These things just don’t happen on Zoom to the same extent.”

The risk in mandating extensive office time is losing key people. “If I required four days a week (in the office) I’d lose 40% of my staff,” another owner countered. The other case for enabling remote work is having a broader talent pool to choose from. “By being a fully distributed team, we’re able to get some fantastic people living in places we’d never be able to recruit from if we required them to be in our office,” said another leader.

AI Opportunities & Challenges

A Cure for Rising Costs & Compressed Timelines

Managing client expectations around budgets was a common theme of the evening, with many saying their clients need to reforecast far more frequently than in the past. Everything costs more now, and this is before the full effect of the new tarrifs kicks in. The ongoing immigration crackdown will also start driving up staff rates at hotels and other hospitality vendors that rely heavily on immigrant labor.

The dramatic time-saving opportunity offered by AI was discussed as one of the few potential ways to offset these cost increases. It also gives planners a fighting chance to produce an event in three months’ time that previously took six months to plan, because the planning cycles have been so compressed recently.

Using Task Forces to Drive Implementation

While everyone praised AI’s capabilities, most said they struggled to make the shift from AI as a nice-to-have optional tool to a vehicle to extract measurable productivity gains for the business. The solution that seemed to resonate is creating an internal AI Task Force that meets regularly to brainstorm ideas for encouraging experimentation among employees, exchanging new use cases and prompting strategies, and developing an evolving set of best practices to share with the whole company.

Missed Learning Opportunities

For all the massive productivity benefits AI offers, one participant voiced concern that younger event profs using AI for routine planning tasks won’t get the same level of knowledge and insight that comes from doing those tasks by hand.

Where Are the 2026 World Cup Events?

The one topic I didn’t have on my bingo card was the 2026 World Cup - taking place next summer across the U.S., Canada and Mexico - but when one person asked if anyone was working on any World Cup events or had received any RFPs, the sound was crickets. Literally nobody at the table has seen any business for it yet. Could it be those shorter term planning cycles? Maybe the “un-welcome” mat being put out by the current administration is causing global brands to pause their plans? It’s unclear. Granted it’s a small sample size, but the volume of event work at the table was quite massive, so it was a tad concerning that nothing is in motion yet.

What’s Next?

We’re enormously encouraged by the enthusiastic response from this dinner and roundtable, and are currently exploring hosing similar dinners in other cities. If you’d like to see your city be one of those, please shoot me a note.

We’re also exploring the idea of a one or two day Summit that would enable time for deep dives on many of these topics, small workgroups to solve common challenges, 1:1 meetings to discuss partner opportunities, and bring in some external voices (e.g. heads of events, CMOs, procurement leaders) to facilitate better collaboration. If you have any thoughts on this, I’d welcome your input.

Here’s to taking your event business to the next level!

Howard Givner
Senior Advisor | Oaklins: DeSilva & Phillips (M&A) email me
CEO | Heathcote Advisory Group (Consulting) email me

Thanks for reading! Please give me feedback by hitting reply.

Catch up on recent articles:

• How Much Is Your Event Agency Actually Worth?

• Using An Accountability Partner to Get Your Biz to the Next Level

• A Tale of 2 Acquisitions: Opus Group CEO Shares M&A Insights

• AI Is Creating Winners & Losers In Events: Which Will You Be?

• Exploring A Sale Without Employees or Clients Finding Out

If and when you’re ready, here are ways I work with agency owners:

• Business Coaching & Owner Accountability

• Business Diagnostic & Company Valuation

• Growth Consulting

• Exit Planning

• M&A (Buy Side & Sell Side)

Wanna chat? Email me, or schedule an intro call.

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