AMR Releases Report on World's Top Exhibition Organisers

This article was published by Mice.net in September 2022.

It’s the report that major exhibition organisers look out for in the contest for who is the biggest world player.

AMR International (acquired by Stax in 2022) has released its top 20 rankings based on exhibition-organising revenues. It’s based on 2021 revenues and despite all the disruption and rebuild of shows around the globe, the top three organisers have remained the same.

The report shows that Informa Markets remains number one, followed by RX (formerly known as Reed Exhibitions) and CFTC (China Foreign Trade Centre).

IFEMA Madrid and Shanghai-listed DLG Exhibitions debuted in the AMR Top 20 this year, while Easyfairs re-entered the list of top organisers. The three organisers to drop out of the top 20 are Italian Exhibition Group (IEG), dmg events and Messe Nuremberg.

In alphabetical order, the five next largest organisers outside the AMR Top 20 this year are the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM), dmg events, Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), IEG and Messe Nuremberg.

AMR Partner Florent Jarry said 2021 was again an exceptional year due to the impacts of COVID-19 on the exhibition sector.

“As a result, organisers with strong portfolios in countries with earlier recovery such as China performed relatively better than others. This has led to the ranking being substantially different from pre-COVID years.

“This year’s AMR Top 20 is a snapshot and not representative of longer-term market positions.”

He said they expected to see further changes next year as most organisers return closer to their pre-COVID portfolio structures.

With the exception of CFTC, which runs the China Import and Export Fair, all organisers in the top 20 experienced a more than 30 per cent drop in revenue compared to 2019. CFTC’s revenue was also down, but not by as much.