Why the exhibitions sector has become one of the most sought-after categories in private equity
For much of the past two decades, the B2B events sector was viewed as a reliable if somewhat pedestrian corner of the information services ecosystem. The investment thesis was straightforward: exhibition sponsors and attendees tend to be loyal, with revenues relatively predictable; businesses operate with high margins and low capital intensity; and they grow at a modest premium to GDP — typically in the mid-single digits. It was a good business, but not one that set the dealmaking world alight.
That narrative has fundamentally changed.
In the span of just two weeks, we have witnessed two landmark transactions that underscore the scale of capital now flowing into the sector. On May 1, Searchlight Capital Partners announced a co-control investment in CloserStill Media alongside Providence Equity Partners, which has owned the business since 2018.
CloserStill, a London-headquartered B2B events platform, was valued at a reported £1.35 billion in the transaction — the second-largest trade show deal in history, behind only Informa’s £4 billion acquisition of UBM in 2018. Under Providence’s ownership, CloserStill grew fivefold through a combination of organic growth, new event launches, and targeted M&A.
Then, yesterday morning, Apollo Global Management announced separate definitive agreements to acquire Emerald Holding, Inc. (NYSE: EEX) and Questex, LLC in all-cash transactions, with the intention of combining the two companies into a leading North American B2B events and media platform with approximately 160 events across complementary end-markets.
Emerald stockholders will receive $5.03 per share, representing a 42.1% premium to Emerald’s unaffected share price and implying an enterprise value of approximately $1.5 billion. Notably, Apollo – a firm with over $1 trillion in assets under management — had not previously invested in the B2B events sector, underscoring the degree to which new, large-scale institutional capital is being drawn to the category.
These are not isolated data points. They are the latest and most prominent signals in what has become a sustained wave of M&A activity across the global events landscape. Understanding why requires an appreciation of the structural forces that have reshaped this sector since the COVID-19 pandemic.
From Pandemic Abyss to Structural Acceleration
The pandemic presented a potential existential crisis for the events industry. Revenue went to zero almost overnight. While many events companies successfully adopted through shifting events online or covering lost revenue through event cancellation insurance, the dislocation and uncertainty caused M&A activity to halt for the better part of two years. Even as events resumed in 2022 and 2023, many investors remained cautious, waiting for attendance and exhibitor budgets to normalize before re-engaging.
That normalization phase is now firmly behind us. The global B2B events market was valued at approximately $50 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 7-8% through the end of the decade, according to multiple independent market research firms — a material step-change from the pre-pandemic trajectory. This is no longer a “GDP plus” industry. It is a sector experiencing a genuine structural acceleration in growth.
Several reinforcing dynamics are driving this inflection. First, marketers are fundamentally reappraising the value of live events within their broader channel mix. Digital marketing costs have risen sharply — LinkedIn CPCs surged 147% between 2022 and 2025 in one large-sample study. Attribution has become more challenging as privacy regulation tightens and third-party cookies deprecate, and the signal-to-noise ratio in online channels continues to deteriorate. Against that backdrop, exhibitions — where buyers and sellers convene in concentrated, high-intent environments — are recapturing budget share.
Second, professionals themselves are seeking opportunities for meaningful, in-person engagement in a world that has become more atomized and digitally mediated. The commercial power of a handshake, a product demonstration, or a curated meeting simply cannot be replicated on a screen.
Third — and critically — many events operators used the pandemic as a forcing function to improve the quality of their businesses. They exited underperforming shows, rationalized portfolios, invested in technology, and built leaner operating models. The result is a cohort of businesses that are not only growing faster but doing so at structurally higher margins than pre-COVID. Hyve Group, for example, reported 15% like-for-like organic growth in 2025 with EBITDA margins increasing, having completed six acquisitions since launching its GO27 strategic plan 18 months ago.
The “AI-Proof” Thesis Is Attracting New
Capital
Perhaps the single most powerful catalyst for the current wave of investor interest is the perception — well-founded, in our view — that B2B events represent a large and growing category that is genuinely insulated from AI-driven disruption. As AI expands the ways that professionals can be targeted and reached online, the value of in-person gatherings — where industries come together, exchange knowledge and develop meaningful connections in a trusted environment — only increases.
This framing is resonating powerfully with investors who are actively reallocating capital away from AI-challenged categories and toward business models with more defensible moats. At the same time, the best events companies are harnessing AI across their businesses. Hyve, for instance, powered over 160,000 AI-enabled meetings in 2025, deploying technology for attendee matchmaking, pipeline generation, and resource optimization.
Crucially, events platforms sit on substantial first-party data assets — proprietary, consent-based databases of otherwise hard-to-reach professionals — that become increasingly valuable in a world of tightening privacy regulation and cookie deprecation. CloserStill has broadened its offering to include digitally enabled formats such as one-to-one meetings, executive roundtables, and lead-enrichment products, while Questex will bring a differentiated “365-day digital engagement model” to the combined Apollo platform. This combination of analog defensibility and digital optionality is a compelling investment proposition.
A Deep and Differentiated M&A Pipeline
M&A remains a critical growth lever for the sector, and the pipeline of actionable opportunities is the richest it has been in over a decade. The pandemic created a multi-year hiatus in deal activity, and many assets that would ordinarily have transacted between 2020 and 2023 are now coming to market in rapid succession. Hyve (owned by Providence and Searchlight) and Clarion Events (owned by Blackstone) are two large-scale events platforms that are considered next in line as possible candidates for a sale.
Beyond these headline platforms, the landscape is populated by a rich array of mid-market and smaller targets — founder-owned businesses, corporate carve-outs, and PE-backed assets approaching natural exit windows — that provide ample fuel for consolidation.
The CloserStill and Emerald-Questex transactions demonstrate that the market is rewarding platforms with a proven M&A engine: CloserStill has made some 12 acquisitions in the past three years, while Apollo has stated its intention to pursue additional bolt-on deals, positioning the combined Emerald-Questex entity as a strategic partner of choice for founders and operators in the large and fragmented B2B events landscape.
What Defines Best-in-Class
In this environment, the events businesses commanding the highest valuations and attracting the most competitive processes share a common set of characteristics: a leading presence in attractive, high-growth verticals; a proven platform and M&A engine capable of integrating bolt-on acquisitions at scale; and an integrated digital offering — powered by proprietary first-party data — that extends the value proposition beyond the show floor into year-round customer engagement.
The convergence of structural growth, AI defensibility, and a generational M&A pipeline have created what we believe is the most attractive environment for events sector dealmaking in over twenty years. For investors with sector conviction and operational capability, the opportunity set is compelling — and the window is open.
If you’re interested in connecting with Solomon Partners’ Technology bankers who cover the B2B events sector, reach out to B2Bevents@solomonpartners.com