CHICAGO — Bear Analytics presented its most recent Bear IQ Benchmark Insights report at its all-new event, MeasureUp, in October 2025. The report details insights from B2B, in-person events that took place from 2022 through the end of Q3 2025, and shared findings around attendance and exhibit and sponsorship sales.
The dataset looks at more than 200 events, 3.3 million registrations and more than 36,000 exhibiting companies in North America, and found notable trends beginning to stand out around attendance and where exhibitors are spending their dollars.
Shifting Spend Away from Traditional Booths
“When we look at exhibitor revenue, even with flatter exhibitor counts, sales revenue is climbing. [The year] 2025 is forecasted to deliver an 11% increase over 2024. Now, some of that is going to be driven by booth prices rising, so the average spend per exhibitor is rising, and that’s helped to offset the slight drop in exhibitor numbers,” Sophie Holt, Vice President of Data Strategy at Bear Analytics, said. “Non-booth revenue continues to expand rapidly.”
From 2022 to 2025, Bear Analytics’ report finds that there has been a 33% growth rate in the percentage of sales that are non-booth revenue. Non-booth revenue is defined as sponsorships, meetings rooms and advertising for this report, and in 2025, it is reported that 23.1% of revenue came from non-booth sales.
This data reflects the wider industry trend, which was also detailed in the recent Explori Channel Insights report, that companies are looking for more unique ways to show up at events, including through sponsorships.
Once again, the Fortune 500 companies serve as a strong example of this shift in spending. When looking at just Fortune 500 companies in 2024, 52.4% of total revenue came from booth revenue; 38.9% came from other revenues like meeting rooms, advertising and premium positions and 8.7% was sponsorship revenue. In 2025, booth revenue dipped to 43.5%, while other revenues made up 49% and sponsorships totaled 7.6%.
Compared to the stat of there being a 33% growth rate in the percentage of sales that are non-booth revenue when looking at the full dataset, there is a 64% growth rate in the percentage of sales that are non-booth for Fortune 500 companies.
“For organizers this signals a clear shift. Success with major corporates will come from offering flexible, creative activation opportunities that align with the strategic objectives of their exhibitors,” Holt said.
“I think for us, [the standout finding] was the movement towards spend diversity within the largest corporate organizations on the exhibitor and non-booth revenue sides,” said Joseph Colangelo, Co-Founder of Bear Analytics. “It’ll be interesting to see if the velocity of this change continues into 2026 or if we’re in for a few years of stabilization. Now is the time to consider or review how your sponsorships are packaged, developed and ultimately culled at times.”
Attendee Numbers See Slight Declines in 2025
According to the data, Bear Analytics found that the average number of registrations per event is down 3.9% in 2025 when compared to 2024. This is in line with what Trade Show Executive’s Dashboard reports have detailed in Q2 and Q3 of 2025, with slight decreases in attendance being reported.
“Importantly though, the share of professional attendees has held steady at around 59% to 60% of total registrations across the period [of 2022 to 2025],” Holt said. “That means that the quality of the audience hasn’t eroded even as volumes adjust slightly.”
However, even though attendee numbers are showing slight declines, the number of organizations participating is actually increasing.
“Organizational reach is the number of unique organizations who send an attendee to the show,” Holt said. “Most organizational reach has grown, and marketing efforts are engaging more unique companies. The story shifts when we look at organizational depth.”
When looking at the average number of attendees per organization, the data also shows a decline, dropping 10.2% from the post-COVID high in 2023 to 2025. From 2024 to 2025, that drop is 5.2%. This trend is even more exaggerated when looking at just Fortune 500 companies, where a decline of 33.9% in the average attendees per Fortune 500 organization has been seen from 2024 to 2025.
“These big groups [of six or more delegates] represented 23% of all attendees in 2024 but have dropped back to only 19% in 2025. So, smaller groups, of two to six, remain strong and single representatives are consistent, those big teams’ participation is being cut back,” Holt said. “Potentially this is a strategic shift: Companies are selecting smaller, potentially higher quality delegations and leaning on those individuals to feed back to their wider teams.”
However, despite declines in the number of attendees registering, the report found that the average percentage of attendees that are paying to register is growing steadily year over year. This growth from 34% in 2024 to 43% in 2025 in paid attendance is coupled with a small decrease in the average registration fee paid. The average registration fee paid dropped from $603 in 2024 to $552 in 2025.
“The rise in paid attendance isn’t only because more people suddenly want to pay; it’s also because the lower-intent, price-sensitive segments have thinned out,” Colangelo said. “What remains is a more intentional audience investing in industry insight, innovation and peer connection. That profile tends to shade toward those individuals who are more price sensitive, have less decision-making authority and tend to be earlier in career. So, for today’s organizer’s there’s a few things they should be thinking about: The first is inventory their onsite experience to match this higher-intent cohort, and deepen solution-focused education, elevate innovation visibility and make it easier for attendees to discover what’s new in the industry.
“The second is rebuilding organizational depth. Use marketing messaging to position the power of the team at your respective show, and potentially even extend that out to bundle or team/group pricing. This can help support or restore the broader mix exhibitors want while protecting price integrity.”
Digging into the data a bit more around government attendance, the report shows that the 2025 end of year forecast for all government attendees is down 49% from 2024. When looking at if those government employees are paid attendees or unpaid attendees, the forecast is down 69% and 36% respectively, highlighting the price sensitivity of this cohort of attendees.
Questions About These Findings?
Are you going to Expo! Expo!, IAEE’s Annual Meeting and Exhibition this week? Check out Bear Analytics at booth #642 at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston.
