On Wednesday, December 3rd, I was scheduled to give a presentation at EDPA’s ACCESS conference on the state of M&A for Experiential Designers & Producers. This was one of the few times I’d actually sent my deck to the event organizer in advance, so I was all set to relax and enjoy the sessions the day before mine.

Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids! [It’s amazing how I remember TV commercials from my childhood, yet can’t remember what I’m looking for when I go from one room to another]. The day before, no less than 5 event industry M&A deals were announced, prompting me to update my slides. Several other acquisitions were completed in the following two weeks, bringing the December total to over fifteen. And that’s coming on the heels of an already productive few months prior, prompting headlines like these:

• Deal Mania Hits Event Industry to Close Out 2025 [A Media Operator]

• 5 Deals in 24 Hours: What’s Behind the Surge in Events M&A [Skift Meetings, with some insights by yours truly]

The flurry of deals this month spans numerous sectors of the industry, including event tech, trade shows & conferences, exhibit houses and, most interestingly, 7 event agencies. And, as can be seen in the table below, a significant chunk of deals were cross-border, the largest tranche of which is the U.S.-U.K. A ‘special relationship’ indeed.

In this issue:

• Who’s doing the buying

• Why Encore acquired FIRST

• U.S. <> U.K. agency consolidations

• Acquisition opportunities

• Chanel’s subway platform fashion show & other ideas worth exploring

• Insights from owners of exhibit suppliers at EDPA’s ACCESS

If this was forwarded to you, click here to subscribe for free:

Updates

• Acquisition opportunity: I’m working with a Canadian event agency looking to acquire a mid-sized agency as part of their growth strategy. The ideal candidate is doing $1M-$2M in adjusted EBITDA, and whose services include sourcing, planning, onsite management, creative design and production. Email me to learn more.

• Social Tables founder Dan Berger’s new boutique hotel & retreat venture, Assemble, is launching their first property in Boise, Idaho (where there are a surprisingly large number of event profs). Similar to how Graduate hotels found a niche in college towns, Assemble aims to develop custom-built venues in cool, smaller cities. Dan’s a sharp entrepreneur, so this should be something special.

• I’m running a Business Bootcamp at Northstar Meetings Group’s IPEC (Independent Planner Education Conference), Feb 4-6, at the Gila River Resorts & Casino - Wild Horse Pass, in Chandler, AZ. It’s free to attend for qualified hosted buyers.

• Pantone’s Color of the Year for 2026 is . . . does anyone care anymore? What started out as a truly brilliant marketing campaign in 1999 seems to have lost its luster. This year’s color, in case you were wondering, is Cloud Dancer, which Pantone bills as “A whisper of tranquility and peace in a noisy world.” Namaste. 🙏

Ideas Worth Exploring

When I come across something interesting that I think will be of use to my readers, I flag it to include in a future post. Unfortunately, those ideas keep piling up, as I’ve come to the realization that the pace of my writing will never keep up with torrent of inspirational items I’m collecting. So I’m just going to start sharing snippets of them in batches, and not waiting for a post around those topics. Here we go . . .

• I wish I’d produced that. Chanel staged a fashion show on a NYC subway platform and train cars. Designed by Matthieu Blazy, Chanel’s artistic director, the event featured models walking in and out of subway cars and up and down the platform. It reminded me of Target’s ‘vertical fashion show’ in 2005, where performers literally walked down the side of New York’s Rockefeller Center.

• Pulling no punches. AMI editorial director James Lancaster’s opinion piece, Performative Collaborations Are Getting Us Nowhere, on the IBTM World Forum for Advocacy is a refreshing, if not snarky take on the wide gap between the lofty announced intentions (‘champion global change', 'connect with power players' and make their 'business influence go even further’) and actual outcomes of such initiatives. Lancaster pulls no punches, with pithy zingers like “the upshot was something called the Barcelona Declaration, which would stand as a monument to the industry’s capacity for pompous waffle, if the landscape weren’t already littered with such monuments.” Pompous waffle, that’s a keeper.

• Contrarian view. Long time incentive industry thought leader Padriac Gilligan, in a recent blog post The Fragile Glow: Questioning the Boundless Optimism Around the Future of Business Events, rightly questions the chorus of upbeat industry forecasts and predictions that comes out this time of year, particularly in the U.S. Despite all the Tailwinds powering our industry forward, there is still a ton of uncertainty being generated by the White House, and it’s anybody’s guess as to whether or when the AI-powered economic boom will burst.

• Future takes. The Wall Street Journal tapped five business and academic leaders for their takes on How the World of Work Will Change Over the Next 20 Years. Trends include: gig workers & small businesses leveraging AI to punch above their weight, a shift toward generalists, the end of middle management, and just-in-time training as roles rapidly involve.

Insights from Owners of Exhibit Suppliers at EDPA

Over 350 business leaders from the exhibit community attended Experiential Designers & Producers Association’s ACCESS conference at the Ritz Carlton Amelia Island in December. As a first timer, I was pleasantly surprised by how many people I knew there, and made numerous new contacts.

As Chris Griffin, EDPA President and CEO of Crew XP, said “M&A was, hands down*, the hottest topic.”

My session on The State of M&A was immediately followed by a panel on Private Equity Unplugged: What It Means and Why It Matters”, expertly moderated by Jason Popp, CEO of Moss, Inc. (one of the companies sold this month), and featuring Isaac Maddox, principal at Invision Capital, Troy Trice, CEO at Align Exhibits, and Sonny Goyal, founder at PEMM Capital (who previously sold to PE).The next day Jason and I led a packed breakout group on M&A and private equity.

Two deals by major players in the space were announced shortly after the conference:

• Access TCA acquired Top Shelf Exhibits

• Moss was sold to Vomela

This is a community of owners of mature businesses, many of whom have already been part of acquisitions, and others contemplating them. Some are ready to exit altogether, while others are looking at M&A as part of a growth strategy. The questions from the various sessions ran the gamut: how to prevent employees from finding out; what happens to the warehouse & fabrication buildings they own; even how big you have to be to go public.

In part because asset-heavy businesses like these tend to be valued lower, a number of owners are looking to pivot up the food chain and position themselves more as agencies, likely by acquisition.

An M&A Explosion to End the Year

I’ve always wanted to write “BREAKING” at the beginning of a social media post, but usually by the time I digest news it’s usually not breaking anymore. On Tuesday, December 2nd when I learned about Eventbrite’s $500M acquisition by Bending Spoons, I posted immediately, fast enough to warrant a “BREAKING” preamble.

The novelty lasted a couple of hours at most, because shortly thereafter I got a call from my friend and FIRST Agency CEO Maureen Ryan-Fable that they’d been acquired by Encore, justifying a second breaking post. Three more acquisitions were announced that day, for sure a high water mark for the event industry.

In total, 15 deals closed in December, which is pretty wild. I’ve been talking and writing about M&A in our space for over a year now, as industry fundamentals and market forces are driving investment and consolidation. But to see such a flurry of deals consummated in such a short time really puts an exclamation mark on things, doesn’t it? Lots to unpack here.

Who’s Doing the Buying

All of the companies were sold to strategic buyers (existing event businesses). For all the talk of private equity making big plays in the events space - according to The Drum, PE makes up 30% of all agency M&A - they weren’t behind any of these deals, though some of the strategic buyers are owned by PE. Private equity is still a driving force behind industry consolidation, but strategic deals don’t need the short term ROI that PE firms do.

These deals were driven by a number of reasons, two of which are worth noting.

The Rationale Behind Encore’s Acquisition of FIRST

One is exemplified by Encore’s acquisition of FIRST, which was sure to raise some eyebrows initially. Encore is a behemoth; according to Bloomberg, the Blackstone-owned AV company generates $500M in profits off of $3B in revenue. They’ve got a great business model, being the in-house vendor at 2,200 hotels and venues, so what do they want with an event agency?

My take is they want to move upstream to get closer to the clients. Between FIRST’s experiential side (fueled by their purchase of BKA in 2018) and their managed services business (where their event teams are implanted across tech and finance giants like Google, Goldman Sachs and McKinsey), FIRST holds tight relationships with decision-makers responsible for 15,000 events a year, relationships Encore hopes to capitalize on to drive growth.

Unlike Av firms, event agencies are asset-light businesses with higher growth rates, and higher valuations. This is why GES launched Spiro several years ago, and why Freeman acquired Sparks. As lucrative as those exhibition services businesses are, they’re so big that growth rates are typically in the 2-4% range, a fraction of what agency growth offers.

Expect to see more deals like this, where established contractors and suppliers snap up agencies to gain greater “share of wallet”, accelerate growth, and increase valuations.

Geographical Expansion

The other main reason behind many of these deals is geographical expansion, particularly between U.S. and U.K. agencies, including:

• Spiro acquired 2Heads

• Denver-based Unbridled acquired/merged with Orange Door

• Incentive firm ITA Group acquired C2 Events

Expect to see more deals between American and English event agencies, as this is a natural fit that capitalizes on the growing globalization and consolidation in the space. While the U.S. market is still strong, the ‘unwelcome mat’ being put out this year is causing the center of gravity in the events world to shift, with Europe and the Gulf being the beneficiaries of many relocated conferences and trade shows.

That said, December also brought us acquisitions of two U.S. event organizers by foreign companies, each of which is their first foray into the U.S. market: India-based Fairfest acquired WTE Miami (which my firm, Oaklins | DeSilva + Phillips, worked on), while U.K.-based Easyfairs acquired the Energy Projects Conference & Expo.

Other Deal Notes

In more evidence of the merging of media and events, Politico acquired the European Business Leaders Community, which hosts the high-level Northern Lights Summit. With AI summaries eroding search traffic, and ad rate growth sluggish, media companies can lucratively leverage their brand equity through proprietary events, while also fostering community among their readers.

Eventbrite’s $500 million sale to Bending Spoons might sound like a lot, until you remember that Eventbrite’s 2017 raise valued the company at $1B, and their 2018 IPO peaked at a $2.8B valuation. The consensus seems to be that the pandemic hit Eventbrite hard (like so many companies) and they never really recovered from it, or from competition from newcomers like Partiful and Luma. Expect Bending Spoons, whose previous acquisitions include Meetup and Vimeo, to cut costs drastically through significant layoffs and leverage AI to drive efficiencies, as they’ve done in with past deals. According to Techcrunch, Bending Spoons identifies a popular product it thinks it can improve inside and out, and buys it from owners who have reached their limits.

That’s a wrap! See you all next year! 🥂

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

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

Catch up on recent articles:

• Q4 M&A Update: Bullish on the Industry, Cautious on Deals

• Mastering the Exit Strategy: Insights On Selling Event Businesses.

• The View From Private Equity: Truelink Capital’s Luke Myers on the GES Acquisition, Investing in Events, and Why Deals Collapse

• Tailwinds

• Preparing Your Event Business For Sale

• 15 Agency CEOs Walk Into A Bar . . .

If and when you’re ready, here are ways I work with event business 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.

If you were forwarded this email and would like to get new weekly articles, click her to subscribe for free: