The Future of Events - Diving Into Industry Data

The Future of Events

Diving Into

Industry Data

At Splash, we’re in the unique position of having thousands of events happening on our platform every day by some of the most well-known brands in the world.

This infographic is a rare look at platform data, showing how the event industry continues to change and evolve.

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~65% fewer events hosted by businesses April-June (YOY)

By April of 2020 there were — conservatively — 65% fewer b2b and b2c events hosted in Splash when compared to the same months from 2019.

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In-person events disappeared due to the pandemic

This abrupt change shifted 95% of events (or more) to virtual. Pre-COVID, only 18% of business events took place exclusively online.

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75% fewer events hosted by non-businesses (April-Dec 2020)

General in-person events not backed by a paid Splash account also saw a large dip.

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Total events are nearing 2019 highs

The good news: There are a lot more events happening today.

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There are three digital accelerators driving exponential change

Computing power, digital storage, and bandwidth exponentially increase every few years. Technology gets cheaper, smaller, and easier to use.

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What was impossible two years ago is possible today

And what is impossible today, will be possible in two years. The three big trends impacting events advanced ten years into the future in basically one year's time.

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In-person has started coming back

Bigger businesses led the charge on the return to in-person. An enterprise business (1000 or more employees) was more than 2.5x likely to host an in-person event than a small to medium business.

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In 2021, 51% of businesses returned to events in real life (IRL)

On average, 26% of all events hosted on Splash were IRL in Q3 2021. August even reached 30%.

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For non-mega events, IRL size is pretty much back to normal

In Q1, there was a big disparity between 2019 and 2021IRL event size. There was about a 37% difference in number of attendees.

In Q3, average audience size shot up to 65 checked-in guests per event, only 7% smaller than the same time period in 2019.

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Can you believe it? 75% of events are still virtual

With variants and kids going back to school, we saw IRL decrease in the fall. This means virtual events aren't going away.

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Now the no-show rate to virtual events continues to increase

We've all heard the term "Zoom Fatigue" by now, but this seems normal for the event world. At the beginning of the pandemic no-show rates were closer to 42% as people were looking to connect with others during lockdown. However, there's been an increase in registrations.

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Sign ups for events longer than 30 min can drastically decline

How many in-person events have you put together or attended that were less than an hour? This is where we have to be smart about our event formatting. Smaller, more personalized experiences have shown us greater returns.

Flexibility and agility continue to be the event industry’s means to survival — that is the ability to react intelligently to external conditions. However, remaining in a reactive state is the surest way to lose in the long run.

As event industry experts, you continue to transform the way you design experiences. It remains crucial to break out of the mold when something that once worked well no longer fits your customer needs.

View our full webinars where we discuss this data with a panel of event experts and hear our Keynote from Futurist Daniel Burrus to learn more in our Future of Events Resources.

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