InfoComm 2024’s Wrap-Up Shows Bigger Las Vegas Numbers Than Orlando’s From 2023
June 16, 2024 by Dave Haynes
There was some casual chatter around InfoComm last week that the show seemed a bit slow, but the numbers now released by show owner and operator AVIXA tell a different story – with counts up in terms of attendees, exhibitors and show footprint.
Total registrants for InfoComm 2024 were just shy of 37,000 (36,967) and the verified attendance count was 30,271. That was from 125 countries, with international attendance making up 23% of the total. Of non-exhibitor attendees, 71% were from the pro AV channel and 29% were end-users.
There were 833 exhibitors across 407,000 net square feet in the two halls. The LVCC was a bit of a mess this year because the aging North Hall is getting a needed/welcomed facelift.
The general patter about InfoComm is that it is a bigger show when it is out east in Orlando, because of factors like higher population density in the eastern US and the ability for a lot of people to get in their cars and panel vans and drive to central Florida.
But the Vegas show last week was actually larger than the 2023 version in Theme Park Central.
Total registrants for InfoComm 2023 were 36,639, with 29,325 verified attendees from 115 countries. International attendance made up 20%. And there were 700 exhibitors across a 358,700 net square foot exhibit hall footprint.
The show goes back to Orlando a year from now.
There’s no real point in looking back further because the COVID era up-ended so much.
Integrated Systems Europe, which AVIXA also has a substantial ownership position in, back in January pulled just shy of 74,000 verified attendees from 162 countries, and had more than 1,400 exhibitors. That show is in Barcelona, and I have heard suggestions from the organizers that it is expected to be even bigger in 2025 and could within just a few years eclipse 100,000.
ISE moved to Catalonia because it had outgrown Amsterdam’s main trade show facility, and now the new home in Barcelona is having to build a new hall across from the main entry, and there is also talk of portable buildings – something done in the last years of the Amsterdam version.
Both shows are great. Similar in terms of the products, services and crowd, but different in a whole bunch of other ways. I look forward to see the stuff and far more so the people at both, but I groan when I have to go to Vegas or Orlando. Again.
I smile when I start my journey to Spain. Interesting city. Fantastic architecture. A pretty good football club. Rich Priorat and Monastrell wines, and weather that’s sunny and just about right for temperature 🙂
One comment about Las Vegas … any lingering perception that Vegas is an affordable solution for trade shows would have to be based on long-past experiences. That place has grown insanely expensive – for rooms when you add the resort fees and other crap, $10 coffees and water bottles, $30 glasses of red wine and fussy cocktails, $178 steaks and on an on. You can stay and eat off-strip, away from the main areas and save money, but have to offset that by the added costs for getting out there and back, and the intangible cost of lost time. There are some very nice hotels like Circa on Fremont, and ones out the edges, but I think they also have the sorts of fees, and mean $50 rides to the LVCC, not $15.
I stayed this week at a great place just past the north end of the strip that was $116/night, no resort fee, comfy, very new rooms, dead quiet, the damn clocks were actually set to the right time (9 of 10 hotels, the clocks are wrong and impossible to correct), replenished (and free water bottles in the room), affordable (and good) breakfast dining and best – no DING-DING-DING slot machines to make me insane.
But it was sleep central, not party central. The big event on while I was there involved elderly Christian women. The pool was teeny and workout facilities equally small. Just like a lot of stuff even a little away from the strip, a bit scratchy in terms of the people circulating in the area. Uber and taxi out and back, and I had zero issues. I am keeping the name to myself, but people can force it out of me over a pint of Hef or Belgian white.
My favorite moment there was zombie-walking to my room from the wine bar just after 9 pm, catatonic from 12 hours of talking to a parade of people on Wednesday, carrying a paper cup of wine because I couldn’t leave with wine in a proper glass. As I walked, the crowd in an adjacent showroom was being whipped up by an announcer because (definitely not) Neil Diamond, listing forward because of all of his makeup, was coming right toward me from his dressing room – which I assume was also his room in the hotel.
Had I not been running on fumes, and not also been pretty much sober, I would have grabbed a selfie. I am not a selfie person, but this was too surreal to not somehow capture.
AVI systems was the big sponsor for the event at the Sphere. And thank you for that! When I went to get a beer at one of the concession stands, a grim, long-since made burger and waffle fries was rung up by the counter staff and the POS read-out said that would have been $41!!! No, really.
Anyone who was in Vegas last week and paying for things, had “Holy Crap!” moments looking at that, and pretty much everything they came across anywhere near the Strip.
I don’t know if other US cities have the facilities and hotels to do this, but the costs for exhibitors and attendees are spiralling up, and perhaps once the long-tern venue agreements wind down, other options could be explored.
Maybe Halifax? The event center is nice, the ocean is three blocks away and the live music and food scenes downtown are great. We are a world capital of these things called lobsters. My place has a couple of cushy guest bedrooms that could hold, I dunno, four industry friends, and I could drive in and be there in 20 minutes instead of flying all day. Who’s with me!?! 🙂
More practically, I like Nashville – batting my eyes – and thinking about great live music and head-exploding hot chicken sandwiches. Not near as many flights in, but A LOT of people could drive to that.
Or San Diego … so Alan Brawn can come (he doesn’t like to fly, and old bones). Miss you, my old friend.
Next show for me … probably ISE. Skipping DSE, which is looking tiny and the dates conflict with my grandson’s birthday party (no contest there on priority). DSE operator Questex had a sales team at InfoComm chasing exhibitor sign-ups, of which there are so far few … if you know where to look. The current count off sister show LDI’s online floor plan is 17 exhibitors. Just 17.
There are rumblings of something this fall around digital signage, but just rumblings. It would not be a trade show. Stay tuned.
There is the Commercial Integrator Expo in Denver this fall.
And though I saw Mr. DailyDOOH three times in LV, I was too stupid to ask him if he is again pulling together events for this fall in NYC, as has been done for many years. Think so, though. The events have skewed heavily, in recent years, to ad tech, and now Adrian is layering in AI for DOOH and signage as the topic.
Great report and thanks for remembering me! Yes to San Diego and I have some craft distilleries to share and of course craft beer.
$51 CAD for 2 eggs, bacon and coffee was a bit much. I vote yes for San Diego or Nashville!
Thanks Dave! A fine roundup…
As one of those exhibitors who were not as busy as expected (given the “back to normal” 37k-ish attendance), I have a question: Whose idea was it to split the show?
It could conceivably have been due to the construction on North Hall, but that doesn’t really ring true. The entire show could have been put in the South Hall (Upper Level) with space left over. In any event, construction on this scale could not have been a surprise to LVCC or AVIXA.
Central Hall was universally reported to be “packed” the first two days (it was certainly several times busier than West Hall on Friday when I took my walkabout). The only busy part of West Hall was in the front, near the “Black Castles” of Samsung and LG. And I saw several West Hall exhibitors leave early on Friday due to lack of traffic.
“Bowling for clients” is not a good return on $45 a square foot of bare concrete.
And thanks for stopping by!
Bowling for clients? That had me laughing.