News of Informa’s £2.24 billion (US$2.97 billion) acquisition of Clarion Events from Blackstone is literally and figuratively a big deal. For anyone responsible for pitching or approving 2027 marketing budgets, the story carries two counter-truths: big-budget events are still a thing, and it’s still hard to measure their true value.
I’ll unpick that awkward truth in a minute. First, some same-page facts about the deal:
Informa’s post-gobble annual revenue is expected to be above US$6 billion with its live events business spanning around 1,000 specialist event brands across more than 40 market categories in over 30 countries. The deal gives Informa “immediate scale in several strategic markets where it sees significant growth opportunities,” according to Pulse 2.0.
Clarion’s best-known brands include IFA Berlin, DSEI, ICE Barcelona, Distributech and ITC Vegas, spanning electronics, defence and security, gaming, energy and technology. Clarion is a largely unknown name here in Australia.
Informa earned US$3.7 billion globally in exhibition revenue in 2025. On its own, it accounted for roughly 65% of the revenue growth among the world’s 20 largest organisers; the rest of that group grew by less than 7%.
As far as deals between exhibition organisers go, this one ranks second only to Informa’s US$5.2 billion acquisition of UBM in 2018. This one’s expected to close by the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals. Informa also plans to separate its academic publisher, Taylor & Francis, to focus purely on B2B.
Future event trends signal
The Informa-Clarion acquisition dominated news coverage analysed this month in our Five Event Worlds scan of more than 50 media outlets for B2B event news. There were 120 stories across nine publications that drove a massive spike in what we call a “Mega Rooms” trend, which tracks events concentrated in fewer, larger hands.
Read more about what inspired the Five Event Worlds research project here, including definitions of the five trends we’re tracking: Mega Rooms, Small Rooms, Ghost Rooms, Same Rooms and Open Rooms.
News of an organisation of Informa’s size streamlining its portfolio squarely around B2B events is noteworthy for another reason: it’s like a Ryan Gosling romcom in a line-up of World War II documentaries.
Meaning, it signals the B2B events industry is happy and healthy, while everyone else grapples with a constant state of polycrisis – a term analysts (and I) use to describe simultaneous, interconnected crises on every front (political, technological, personal, financial, environmental) that we’re now exposed to in real time.
A few quick stats to underscore the positive:
- More budget goes to B2B events than any other channel, including digital, email, social media and search (per the Center for Exhibition Industry Research (CEIR) 2026 Marketing Spend Decision Report with ahat tip to Michelle Russell for her take on PCMA’s Convene).
- The Australian Business Events Association (ABEA) reports more than $1 billion is forecast from delegate spend at 806 business events already secured across Australia up until 2033.
- Informa reported 8% underlying growth in B2B Live Events in H1 2026, despite more than 15 events being rescheduled from H1 to H2.
- Investors are betting big: close to US$6 billion has been invested in the world’s top 20 event organisers so far this year, and private equity-owned organisers grew 11.4% last year (Grant Thornton Stax, via Skift Meetings).
- One of those bets, Hyve, sold to Hellman & Friedman for a reported US$1.8 billion after growing revenue 39% in 2025. The buyer’s rationale? As AI reshapes commerce, “the ability to foster human connections” will be “more valuable to businesses than ever,” Hellman & Friedman partner Hunter Philbrick told Skift Meetings.
Indeed, let’s talk about AI…
The awkward truth moment
Now, I’ve been host of The CMO Show for a decade, and as chief storyteller for big brands and a journalist, I’ve interviewed the world’s best innovators and leaders, and reported on the worst. The awkward truth starts here:
Marketing budgets are increasingly governed by ROI measurement and revenue attribution, yet marketers still struggle to justify big spend on big events.When they do, it’s too little, way too late in an AI-world.
Sales and marketing have been holding hands for a long time. They share a love for B2B events and exhibitions doing much of the heavy lifting: sales get face-to-face relationship time, marketing gets its brand in lights in front of the whole C-suite.
Then a tired events manager turns off the lights, and up to 80% of trade show leads never receive any follow-up, which one reporting vendor fairly rates as “the single biggest waste in trade show marketing”.
Only 1 in 3 marketers track leads until they become sales, and fewer than half routinely calculate ROI (EXHIBITOR’s 2015 sales lead survey, cited by Vendelux).
For those that do – six in 10 count sales closed after the show, within six months for two-thirds of them – it’s morbidly slow in a world where AI can not only report and measure in real-time, but interpret, analyse and forecast most things in our lives, down to when we need to get milk.
It strikes me that in a fast-moving world in polycrisis that’s putting extraordinary pressure on our time, attention spans and mental acuity, well, let’s say there’s ‘room to grow’ if the gold standard is an ROI checkpoint 180 days after the biggest spend in a corporate marketing budget.
Human connection in the age of AI
As someone who works in and loves B2B events as a speaker, MC and facilitator, I’d argue the true value of this sector is not the gatherings themselves, in all their formats, shapes and sizes. It’s the people: real people seeing other real people – talking, listening, learning and laughing. That’s more powerful than ever in the age of AI.
Every buyer attending B2B events now has AI at their fingertips. Access to knowledge, information and analysis is ubiquitous. Their attention is fragmented, and every interaction must be valuable.
So what’s the appeal? The oldest drawcard of all – human connection. Shared stories. Facilitated experiences that foster a sense of inclusion and meaning.
Human connection is basic stuff at one level, but also enormously powerful when seen through the lens of business leaders orchestrating a multibillion-dollar acquisition.
One more data point to anchor that idea:
Skift Meetings notes that AI-generated search summaries are cutting referral traffic to publishers and other businesses, pushing companies to find audiences that don’t depend on algorithms – and events offer one. Howard Givner, senior advisor at Oaklins DeSilva+Phillips and CEO of Heathcote Advisory Group, describes live events as potential “truth sanctuaries”.
Given the amount of jargon that still wafts through B2B events, I’d take the “truth sanctuary” idea with a grain of salt. Still, my take is the attention game is getting much harder in other channels.
Either way, audiences, sponsors and exhibitors continue to find value in spaces where authentic, human engagement is the defining factor.
The bottom line
So what’s the ultimate point for marketers and event professionals glancing at yet another merger announcement?
B2B events remain strong: the biggest player in the world is betting on it. Large chunks of many corporate marketing budgets still go to big events, so sales and business leaders are putting a lot of faith in them.
The awkward bit is about ROI – not just that it’s not rigorously measured by most, and not measured at all by many, but that marketers know it.
This is your data conscience speaking:
- Only 39% of more than 2,000 event professionals track ROI directly (InEvent 2026 analysis).
- 86% of B2B marketing and events leaders can’t accurately attribute revenue back to events (Vendelux 2026 B2B Events Survey).
Granted, both are event-tech vendor reports, but a widely cited 2015 EXHIBITOR survey put the share of marketers tracking event leads to sales at just 35%, so a decade on, not much changed.
And the people signing off budgets have noticed: Forrester reports about half of organisations believe their events perform well, but only 38% of CMOs agree (Q1 2026 State of B2B Events Survey).
Ultimately, Informa’s move is a signal that qualified attention from B2B buyers remains as valuable as ever. It’s a company doubling down on the benefits of scale and geographic reach, which in turn translates into market power – over both buyers’ time and sponsors’ budgets.
We won’t see its true impact until well into 2027.
In the meantime, the challenge to event organisers and marketers is to use the golden thread between human connection, polycrisis pressure and the promise of AI, to create an ROI model that covers every event shape and size.
What would that model look like, and can AI finally close the measurement gap? That’s where I’m heading next. If you’re cracking it, I’d love to hear how.
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