CloserStill and Nineteen Group chairman Phil Soar takes an indepth look at the 2023 Size and Scale Index for Exhibitions (SASiE) and provides historical comparisons and context from the past decade.
The EIA (the secretariat for the AEV, AEO and ESSA) produces an excellent annual report about our industry, called SASiE. This is now the only deep dive we have into UK exhibitions and it is an immensely valuable document. There are 35 pages of statistics and graphs and, having been allowed by the AEV’s Rachel Parker to have a preview of the findings, here are some of the takeaways:
- In 2023 our main venues ran 1,016 recognised exhibitions, 42% of which were trade, 40% consumer and 18% conferences with an exhibition element (though only 25% of these conferences were annual). This is an increase of circa 5% on 2022. This is the highest number of events recorded since 2017. Good news.
- Both trade and consumer were running at circa 49% net/gross sold space ratio
- The average number of exhibitors at each event was 129 – though trade was 162. This is down slightly on 2022.
- Total visitors to all events numbered some 6,920,000 – well up on 2022. The median event (i.e. the 508th by size) had 3,000 visitors.
- Compared with pre-Brexit 2016, average visitor numbers were still down – trade shows running at 92% of 2015 and consumer shows at 72%. But this could be a function of a number of new, smaller consumer shows which would be expected to depress the average.
- The number of exhibiting companies rose significantly in 2023 over 2022 – 17% for trade and 5% for consumer. However, the total number of exhibiting companies still appears to be a troubling 30% below the number in 2015.
Lack of data makes it very difficult to assess the performance of the UK exhibition industry over the past decade and it has been a tumultuous ten years. Having largely recovered from the financial crash of 2008-09, we were thrown into a collection of crises, which made the 1990-2008 period seem like a millpond.
First came the economically disastrous Brexit of 2016. Then the pandemic of 2020-21, then Prime Minister Truss, then the war in Ukraine, and then the energy and inflation crisis.
Our own industry’s performance can only be looked at in the context of the whole UK economy. This can best be described as poor. While the UK grew faster than almost all other major economies in the 2010-2015 period, this came to a shuddering halt after Brexit.
Just looking at the last five years (2019 to 2023) the IMF (International Monetary Fund) says the US economy grew 8.2%, the Eurozone at 3%, Japan at 2.8% (and even Italy 3.6%). The UK economy grew at just 1% during that period. Only Germany, hit hard by Russian energy, performed worse of major countries.
Household wealth in the UK has declined every month since 2021
The figures are actually rather worse than they seem. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the aggregate of all economic activity in a country. It is not easy to measure, but by using the same methodologies it does allow comparisons across countries and years.
The UK Government tends to obfuscate these useful numbers. It tends to give crude GDP figures (for the last 12 months, 0.1% growth). But the significant number is GDP per head – in other words, if one averages out GDP growth across the whole population, it shows what happens for each of our citizens.
The UK population has been growing at a very fast rate – in 2023 alone, 750,000 excess of immigration over emigration meant that the UK population grew by 1.1%. With zero growth in real wealth (GDP) this means that, on average, each UK citizen was 1.1% WORSE off than in 2022. At the beginning of 2024 GDP per head was still 1.5% below its level in 2019.
GDP grows through productivity – which means output per person, driven by learning, building, inventiveness, the quality of educational systems and work ethic, among others. Need we wonder why the UK’s GDP per head is falling.
The last time there was a comparable fall in wealth (GDP) per head was in 1955. That highlights the sea in which UK exhibitions are swimming.
(Caveat: there is a respectable body of opinion which argues that GDP figures no longer reflect today’s reality. The massive change in spending habits since the arrival of web/wifi/iphones – two decades ago – has led to a “new” or at least “different” economy – think Uber/Deliveroo/TikTok/Amazon. The argument is that GDP calculations cover a partially outdated concept).
Exhibitions are a proxy for the country’s economy
This is still the context in which we need to view our own industry – an industry which is, in many ways, a good proxy for the country’s whole economic activity.
If the economy of the UK has not grown in the past five years, then this must be reflected in our own performance. Adding to this, we were among the worst hit industries during the pandemic and inevitably will take time to fully recover.
But let me stress, as ever, that because square metres are not growing across our industry, it does not mean that your show and your company is not doing well.
Using SASiE’s research over the period 2015-2023, and other historical research by the AEO, EIA and a number of independent commentators, let me consider four of the core statistics which are key to our industry.
One great strength of the SASiE research is that it is revenue neutral – in other words it does not collect data on pounds spent and received. What it actually counts is square metres, visitors and the number of exhibitors. Financial inflation is irrelevant.
As one year is only one year, particularly post-Covid, I have taken all the information that we have (SASiE, EIA, independent financial analysis etc) to try to look at the trend lines of the UK exhibitions industry over the past 10 years. There are four separate charts which are an amalgam of these sources.
Total numberr of exhibiting companies
This goes back only to 2015 as that was the first year SASiE obtained this information and there was no source for it before 2015.
The graph below suggests that there are 30% fewer companies exhibiting overall compared with 2015 – a surprisingly large gap.
As the total gross square metres has declined 17% and total net square metres circa 11%, this suggests that we might have lost a large number of smaller exhibitors and fewer larger ones.
In fact, I am somewhat skeptical of this finding, wondering whether the methodology in the first of these years – 2015 – was perhaps not perfect. None of our other analyses support the likelihood that exhibitor numbers have fallen quite so much.
Total visitors to all shows in the last 10 years
There is clearly a post-Covid recovery here, but we should be aware that attendance in the UK peaked at circa 11 million in 2000 and has broadly been declining over the quarter-century since.
This has been particularly affected by the disappearance of major consumer shows such as The Motor Show, London Boat Show and Top Gear and does not reflect the trend on any particular trade event.
Net square metres sold at all UK exhibitions 2013-2023
Gross square metres paid for, on average by exhibitions
This is quite a telling chart and one we have not published before. But it seems to show that exhibitions are using and booking less space each year – on aggregate 17% less than in 2015 (see graph below).
This is obviously a key finding for our major venues. This might have been mitigated by organisers tightening up on space usage – so that their net space as a percentage of total space paid for might be increasing. But this is not the case – net/gross usage remains at 49%, which is about normal for the whole of the past 15 years.
This is of more concern to venues than organisers, because exhibition space is the core source of their revenues – including catering and car parking. They have many other sources of revenue – conferences, festivals, examinations etc – but the basic exhibition is at the heart of their business models.
Findings from the last 10 years
I think these graphs and their data largely stand on their own. But there is one obvious takeaway.
If you look at the total number of companies exhibiting in the UK, this number appears (and I stress appears) to have dropped by 30% between 2015 and 2023.
If we compare this with total number of net square metres sold at UK exhibitions, then this number has fallen 11% between 2016 and 2023. And if we look at the Gross Square Metres (not net) used by the average exhibition, this number has fallen 17% between 2015 and 2023.
While these three percentages differ, the direction of travel strongly suggests what has happened in the period.
In pure monetary terms the numbers are different – a decline in square metres of (say) 15% suggests an increase in headline revenue terms of around 25% in the same period. (Pure revenue figures are hard to find – this is based on average increase in revenue per square metre (ARPSM) across some of the larger players).
Another caveat is that 2023 did not show the final recovery from Covid – so we might expect to see better figures in 2024.
Two conflicting reports
We recently had the UFI report which claimed that the UK trade show industry in 2023 was running at 115% of 2019.
Among other uncertainties with UFI it was unclear:
- Whether UFI was inflation discounting – i.e. quoting simple revenue rather than square metres
- Which companies had been included in its analysis
- Whether there had been “good news bias”- i.e. companies with poorer results had not responded
- And, crucially, whether UFI has taken the worldwide turnover of the UK companies rather than the UK turnover – this is critical as the UK is the only market where the larger companies have more turnover outside their home base than inside
The second report is SASiE – which examined 1,016 events in total, is able to make direct year-on-year comparisons since 2015, and, crucially, is working on square metres and not on revenues – hence inflation is not an issue.
I don’t think one needs to be a statistician to prefer SASiE, and indeed to totally discount the UFI report (UFI also says that the German industry was running at only 80% of 2019 in 2023 – by far the most interesting stat).
Overall, SASiE tells us that our industry in 2023 was some 5%-10% bigger in terms of square metres and visitors than in 2022. This reflects a continuing recovery from Covid and quietly suggests that this recovery will continue in 2024.
However, if we look at exhibition trends over the past decade then the pattern is also clear. In that period our industry is smaller both in terms of square metres and visitors (but NOT revenues) to the tune of around 15% – with wide variations in sectors and company by company.
But remember, anyone in the newspaper, magazine or television industries would kill for a decade like that.
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