Event company consolidations, such as Cvent’s acquisition of Goldcast, an AI-powered video content platform, and ON24, an enterprise webinar and digital engagement company, and Constant Contact’s recent acquisition of GURU Conference and Education, have taken the industry by storm. International company acquisitions have also been taking place, an example being Munich-based trade show organizer Messe München’s acquisition of Atlanta-based Tradeshow Logic.
Editor’s Note: We are updating this story to track the pace and direction of consolidations as mergers happen in real time.
The latest sign of how changing economic times impact associations and their events was the announcement that Smithbucklin, which already works with meeting professionals viat their event agency 360 Live Media, acquired McKinley Advisors, a consulting agency that specializes in research, strategy, governance and business transformation.
“Contemporary associations increasingly need high-capability partners to help them successfully navigate new challenges and opportunities,” said Matt Sanderson, president and CEO of Smithbucklin.
March 1, 2026: More alliances were formed this week in DMCs, events and experiential marketing as part of a trend we noted in January in event support companies consolidating. On Thursday, MC&A, a JTB Americas company, announced that it has acquired Imprint Events Group. The announcement called it, “a partnership built on alignment, trust and a mutual commitment to thoughtful growth.” Imprint will continue to operate as a separate company under MC&A Group with the leadership team of Adriane Hodder as President and Nicole Marsh as Chief Operating Officer staying on.
The same day, International Association of Exhibitions and Events (IAEE) announced that it had acquired Exhibitor Group, including EXHIBITOR magazine and EXHIBITOR LIVE, a trade show for corporate event professionals. EXHIBITOR was last purchased by STAR Exhibits & Environments in 2022. STAR CEO Mark Johnson said the goal was to preserve a critical industry voice during a time of uncertainty and disruption post-COVID and as his experiential marketing business grew, he recognized that EXHIBITOR needed a dedicated owner to fully realize its potential. IAEE President and CEO Marsha Flanagan called it a bold strategic move to unite exhibition organizers and exhibitors in one cohesive ecosystem.
That followed the January announcement that the experiential strategy and production companies High Output, L!VE and Sardis will merge under the brand Ansera owned by Willistown Capital. “Live experiences are no longer competing with one another–they’re competing with never-ending distractions,” said EJ Corporan, Director of Marketing and Growth at Ansera. The new company will focus on measuring deliverables such as attention, memory and meaning to gain a more rigorous understanding of how people experience moments together. The company will offer creative and content development, technical production and systems integration along with research-driven experience design.
We see this as three more proof points in the argument that events are an even more valuable part of the marketing stack worth acquiring.
Jan 23, 2026: The press releases started to trickle in at the end of 2025. In December, Cvent acquired Goldcast, an AI-powered video content platform. That was followed quickly by the acquisition of ON24, an enterprise webinar and digital engagement company.
Ricoh acquired Presentation Products, Inc., a New York-based audiovisual integrator, to expand Ricoh’s digital services portfolio in North America by building upon the strengths of Cenero, the company’s wholly-owned managed AV services provider.
Then, last week, Constant Contact announced that it was acquiring GURU Conference and Education, an indicator that events may be taking a higher profile role in corporate marketing efforts, according to tech for events speaker Dahlia El Gazzar. “The acquisition of the Guru Conference is a clear signal that events are no longer a supporting marketing channel. They’re the main stage,” she said.
Read More: The IRL Boost: New Findings for Maximizing ROI from In-Real-Life Events in the Age of AI
“In a low-trust, high-noise environment, events create something brands can’t buy through ads or algorithms: belief, credibility and real connection at scale,” she continued. She called events an asset that delivers captive attention, accelerates trust, fuels content and community year-round and drives decisions faster than any other channel. “This move shows that events are being recognized not as expenses, but as one of the most valuable, relationship-driven marketing engines available right now,” she concluded.
GURU Media Hub founder Jay Schwedelson will take the title of brand ambassador and lead the creative vision and operation of GURU Conference and “collaborate with Constant Contact on content, education and engagement initiatives designed to help small businesses improve marketing performance across channels,” according to the press release.
Leveraging In-Person and Virtual Content at Scale
Event technology is always a dance between start-up innovation, consolidated integration and the funding from that exit fueling the next round of start-up innovation and specialization. AI seems to be speeding up all phases of that turn with meeting professionals demanding more automation to meet their business needs and legacy platforms adding LLM features to current products at record pace.
We asked McNeel Keenan, Cvent vice president of product management, what the consolidation means for meeting professionals.
“Consolidation only matters if it’s going to simplify the life of customers,” he said.
Read More: Cvent Connect Rolled Out Road Map to a More Integrated and AI-enabled Meetings Future
He framed the two recent Cvent acquisitions as a shift in how digital is seen as part of the experience mix today. Rather than thinking about virtual sessions as webinars and using a separate platform to produce those, meeting professionals are looking for opportunities to getting more out of all content—in-person and digital. The pain point is how quickly that can be repurposed.
“There is a certain level of authenticity produced, but the time decay can be quite rapid. Time is of the essence,” Keenan said. Leveraging AI for blog posts, social media posts and short-form video is an efficient way to make multiply the energy produced in these human exchanges.
“AI was a big unlock for the value of content, but the bigger play is making your personal events work harder and continuing the momentum between programs,” Keenan said.
One of the features acquired in the ON24 purchase is the security, performance and compliance capabilities needed at corporate scale. Keenan doesn’t see that going away. He estimates virtual events are 28% of Cvent attendee hub usage and growing year-over-year. “Digital wasn’t a flash-in-the-pan from the pandemic,” he said.
“We are building one orchestration platform where companies can engage with the same audience through different mediums with one technology backbone,” he said.
A single efficient platform can result in cleaner data, better reporting on outcomes, smoother workflows, more insights and greater personalization opportunities. “People don’t want more tools, they want tools that are better connected,” he said. “Instead of building these things from scratch, you can just enable features like speaker highlights, and attendee behavior as daily summaries already built in and instantly share with the boss,” he said.
Because Cvent Holding Corp. is owned by Blackstone, Inc., once the acquisition is final, they can put resources into integrating and developing the technology to meet customer needs. “We are able to increase research and development spend by orders of magnitude, and that brings a better customer experience and ultimately brings a better more connected experience,” he said.
Keenan sees a desire from event organizers driving more consolidation in the industry for cost savings and reduced complexity. “It always starts with a demonstrated pain point—in this case the need to unify data and consolidate workflows. Then you can leverage AI once you have everything in one place to drive efficiency,” he said.
Portrait of an International Acquisition
Not all of the recent acquisitions were technology-related. Last week, Munich-based trade show organizer Messe München strengthened its position in North America with the acquisition of Atlanta-based Tradeshow Logic, a full-service event marketing, logistics, operations and general contracting company. The sale was based on internal synergies as much as it was based on an expansion of global markets, according to one of the principals.
Messe München reached out to Tradeshow Logic CEO BJ Enright last year for help producing two American events, the international trade fair Analytica USA which took place for the first time in the United States in Columbus, Ohio last September, and the transport logistics show based in Miami, TL Americas. “They were looking for a partner that they could trust to help them both with current events in the U.S. and then with bringing some of the 20 other fairs they produce to North America.”
Read More: New and Renovated: Meetings in International Cities
The relationship started as a service provider into a more serious relationship after Enright’s team stepped up to an advisory role. “There was just such an amazing connection. Our teams worked really well together and that led to where we are today,” she said.
Enright plans to stay on leading the Messe Münch subsidiary doing what she loves and said no positions will be eliminated because there is no duplication of roles. The new structure will offer young employees international growth opportunities.
Enright comes from an event entrepreneurial family. Her parents owned Andrews, Bartlett & Associates a contractor based in Hudson Ohio that sold to GES in 1993. She stressed that she was not looking to sell when the offer arrived. In fact, she was working on her “in-perpetuity plan” so the company could go on forever. She joked that she gets two or three LinkedIn inquiries a day to sell that she deletes. “But you need to be open to the right conversation with the right person when it comes along,” she said.
“Having a partner with that international reputation and reach futureproofs our business and paves the way for long-term growth and stability,” she said.
