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About the Global Industry Performance Review 2025 The Global Industry Performance Review is jwc’ s annual flagship analysis of the global exhibition industry, now significantly expanded. With more than 700 pages, it provides an unrivalled overview of historical performance, current market conditions and medium-term outlooks for the sector.
For the first time, the 2025 edition covers more than 30 exhibition markets worldwide, including Europe, Asia, North America, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa, with specific, detailed market profiles. Each combines macroeconomic indicators, trade activity and government context with exhibition-specific data such as net rented space, revenues, key performance indicators, venue landscapes, competitive structures and leading organisers.
Findings are based on a database which now includes data from more than 10,000
Sectoral performance varies The event database allows for a comparison of performance by industry segment. Based on the evolution of more than 300 European exhibitions between 2019 and 2024, the report finds that events focused on energy, waste and environment, as well as security and defence, have outperformed the broader market in terms of net rented space and visitor development.
Concentration continues among leading companies At the company level, concentration of market share among the largest exhibition groups continues. The Top- 40 exhibition companies account for an estimated 42 % of the global exhibition market, with the Top-10 representing around a quarter of total revenues.
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exhibitions globally. This dataset underpins analyses of event size, visitor attendance, pricing levels and sectoral performance across regions.
The report features the highly anticipated Top-40 company performance review, benchmarking financial and operational development of the world’ s leading exhibition companies. This includes analysis of revenue structures, growth rates, operating results and differences between total company revenues and pure event-organising income.
The Global Industry Performance Review is based on publicly available and independently verifiable sources, including company reports, association statistics and jwc’ s own market research and estimates. It provides a consistent, comparable evidence base for organisers, venue operators, investors and policymakers assessing relative performance across markets and business models.
Financial performance among this group improved significantly between 2019 and 2024. In 2024, the Top-40 recorded strong year-on-year revenue growth, while estimates for 2025 point to a slower pace, consistent with the broader normalisation of the industry cycle.
The GIPR also compares company rankings based on total revenue with those based solely on eventorganising revenues. The resulting differences highlight variations in strategic focus and business models, showcasing the need to differentiate between pure organising activities and broader revenue streams when benchmarking performance.
Services play a growing role in revenue mix A segmental revenue analysis shows
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“ The Top-40 exhibition companies account for an estimated 42 % of the global exhibition market, with the Top-10 representing around a quarter of total revenues” |
a rising contribution from services among venue-owning exhibition companies. Between 2019 and 2024, services recorded the strongest growth among event-related revenue streams in the analysed sample, increasing their share of total revenue.
At the same time, net space sales remain the largest single revenue component for most companies. The data indicate that services are supplementing, rather than replacing, space-driven revenues, contributing to a more diversified revenue structure.
A more comparative phase for the industry With growth moderating and volume expansion constrained in many markets, differences in pricing levels, portfolio composition and revenue structure become more visible across markets and companies. To succeed, organiser businesses must be able to roll out more specific implementations of their exhibitions in different markets.
The 2025 edition of the jwc report reflects this shift through a standardised set of market profiles covering more than 30 countries, an expanded database of over 10,000 events, and detailed company-level benchmarks. In a period of normalised growth, the report positions these comparative tools as a foundation for assessing relative performance across regions, sectors and business models. At more than 700 pages, the report offers by far the most comprehensive compilation of historical data, current performance and medium-term projections available for the global exhibition industry. EW
n Contact jwc for a purchase. http:// www. jwc. eu. com /
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www. exhibitionworld. co. uk |
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