By Phil Soar, co-founder of CloserStill Group and Chairman of Nineteen Group

Overwhelming is probably the best adjective to describe what has happened in the last few weeks. In three short months, private equity spent $5.6bn on major trade show assets (CloserStill, Hyve, Emerald, Questex). That is more than was spent for businesses in our industry in the previous 8 years. As Baris Onay says, this is because PE has become obsessed with buying “In Real Life.”

Excluding the Messen, of the 10 largest trade show companies in the world, 7 are now owned by private equity. And of these PE investors, all but one are based in the USA (the exception is Easyfairs with Inflexion and COBEPA).

Hence the comparison with the Premier League, where of the current 20 members no fewer than 11 are owned by USA investors. Not all are private equity – the Glazers at Manchester United and Kroenkes at Arsenal are personal funders.

A clear pattern – the dominance of US investors

Twenty years ago, none of this was true. So what happened?

Let’s look first at football. Even 25 years ago, the buyers of major football clubs were fans, usually people who had an emotional attachment to their club. I was an example, buying Nottingham Forest. But several things changed. One was television. Soccer had been shown in the USA since 1992, but it was in 2013 that NBC bought the rights to the Premier League, showing three games on Saturday and three on Sunday. Football was so popular that NBC often put games onto their main network channel. Key was time zones.

NFL, Baseball and Basketball are shown on weekend afternoons and evenings. But a 12.30 kick-off in Manchester is 07.30 in New York and 04.30 in LA. A traditional 3pm kick off in Liverpool is 10am in New York and 7am in LA. Midweek games are 2.30 pm in NY. So, soccer didn’t clash with major US sports and NBC could show sport all day. Within five years soccer viewing figures were exceeding those of the fourth US sport, Ice Hockey.

And why the Premier League?

Two reasons. One was simply the English language. And the other was competitiveness. The Premier League is regarded as being highly competitive. Elsewhere Bayern have won 11 of the last 12 Bundesliga, Paris St Germain have won 12 of the last 14 in France, Spain has meant Real or Barcelona. For the last 30 years Italy usually meant Juventus or the two Milan clubs. There was little sense of competitiveness. Bayern versus Mainz, or Real versus Cadiz were just not interesting.

Gradually the appeal of Premier League football began to dawn in Wall Street – often because the sons and daughters of investors were watching the game. And the cost buying these assets was far less than the cost of buying American teams. The Seattle Seahawks NFL team is widely expected to sell for $9 billion this year, the highest price ever paid for a US franchise. The last baseball deal was for the San Diego Padres at $3.9bn – but this for a middle ranking team at best which has never won the World Series.

By comparison, Premier League clubs looked a steal. The Glazers paid £790 million for Manchester United in 2005 (then ranked as the top soccer asset in the world) but added £525 million debt  so paid only £265 million cash. In 2025 ownership of Crystal Palace changed hands, valuing the club at £423 million. Palace have never come near winning the League. A prime US sports asset sells for 10-12 times annual revenues. A European soccer club at 3-4 times. Soccer looked cheap.

Basically, US investors looked at the Premier League and saw increasing interest and assets which came cheap. (We can discuss Clearlake and Chelsea and $4.5bn at some other time).

Hence the comparison with trade show companies

Obviously, some US assets like Emerald and their forebears had been owned by US/Canadian private equity since 2012. But the heart of the industry (excluding the unbuyable Messen in Germany) was in West London. The first serious entries by private equity were for Spearhead (LDC in 2000) and Clarion (£45m by Hg in 2004). Providence first entered the fray with George Little from DMG in 2011 (circa £100m) and Phoenix bought Closer for £25m in 2012.

But the whole trade show/PE relationship really took off in 2015 when Providence bought Clarion for £200m, Inflexion bought Closer for £125m and Charterhouse bought Comexposium for Euros €550m.

You can see the trend developing, just as it did for Premier League, and interestingly over the same timescale.

The apparent sudden explosion in exhibition interest in 2026 has been brewing for some time, but there seem two clear drivers. One is the perception that trade shows are immune in a frightening AI world (and indeed have a tailwind). And the other is Covid. After 18 months of no revenues trade shows came roaring back. One word tells the story – resilience.

So what do the investors have in common?

A return on their investment. Todd Boehly is not likely to be watching Chelsea in 2040. In both cases, the buyers believe that they own assets which will only grow in value – just as all US sports franchises have, and as US stock markets have created more and more billionaires who want to own a prestige plaything. I am interested in the future because I shall be living there. But I cannot predict it.  I’m sure future valuations in both football and trade shows will be very interesting indeed. I wonder which one will outpace the other.