One of Indianapolis’ largest annual trade shows is working to generate more money for its political action committee and pushing for legislation aimed at curbing environmental restrictions on converting street-legal vehicles to competitive race cars.
The pop culture-focused convention, which attracted about 40,000 people each year to the Indiana Convention Center prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, will host its new Louisville event June 16-18 at the Kentucky Exhibition Center.
In this week’s episode, reporter IBJ’s Mickey Shuey tries to gauge the potential impact on Indianapolis of having a tougher competitor for some of the city’s bread-and-butter business.
Officials in Nashville say they plan to pursue some of the events that take place in Indianapolis now that the city is planning to build a $2.1 billion, 60,000-seat enclosed stadium.
Indianapolis has been given another chance at hosting one of the major events it lost out on in the early days of the pandemic.
Co-founder Carl Doninger hopes to strengthen the pop culture convention’s branding while looking at additional markets for more events.
The National Confectioners Association said Tuesday that the show will rotate between Indianapolis and Las Vegas starting in 2024, moving from Chicago where it has been held since 1997.
Nearly two years into the pandemic, the agency that oversees the convention center, Lucas Oil Stadium and other sports venues has been able to pay its bills without layoffs or long-term facilities closures.
The Indiana Sports Corp. would be responsible for administering a grant program to disperse the funds, with the organization giving money to groups across the state as well as using a portion of the funding for its own bidding efforts.
The organization behind the world’s largest racing trade show has purchased an office/industrial building in Speedway where it plans to open a headquarters for its new membership program.
The latest sign of the influential technology event’s dwindling size was Friday’s announcement that CES will run one day shorter than originally planned.
Just two weeks before it is set to open its doors to tens of thousands of people at the massive Las Vegas Convention Center, one of the largest technology trade shows is in limbo.
The museum honoring the Hoosier basketball legend is budgeted for $1.5 million as part of a $28 million convention center project.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops approved plans Wednesday for Indianapolis to host a National Eucharistic Congress, a five-day summer event that organizers say could draw as many as 80,000 people to the city.
The event, typically one of the biggest annual conventions in Indy, was held virtually last year because of the pandemic.
Over the past few years, interest in hosting environmentally friendly, “sustainable” business meetings and conventions has risen as inexorably as sea levels and summer temperatures.
The massive gaming event is expected to draw upward of 40,000 people to downtown Indianapolis from Thursday through Sunday, marking the largest convention the city has hosted since before the coronavirus outbreak.
A lot is riding on the revival of in-person meetings. Prior to the pandemic, conferences and trade shows generated more than $1 trillion in direct spending and attracted 1.5 billion attendees annually around the world, according to the Events Industry Council, a trade group.
IBJ reporter Mickey Shuey talks with John Downs, the CEO of the National Confectioners Association, to find out why the group decided to host its signature trade show—The Sweets & Snacks Expo—in person this year and how it picked Indianapolis to be the event’s location.
Indianapolis this week welcomed the Sweets & Snacks Expo at the Indiana Convention Center—its first major trade show since March 2020. John Downs, chief of the organization that organizes the event, said he’d like to see it return to Indianapolis in the future.
