Encore is preparing to go public, and its SEC filing gives meeting professionals something they rarely get: a detailed look at how the in-house AV business actually works.
The filing explains exclusive on-site venue agreements, revenue-sharing commissions, an 80% capture rate, and Encore’s plans to capture more business inside the properties where it operates. For planners who have ever wondered why bringing an outside AV company can become surprisingly complicated, it explains quite a bit.
I recently worked through the AV numbers for an event at a hotel where Encore is the in-house provider.
We could potentially save tens of thousands of dollars by bringing in another AV company.
Pretty straightforward, right?
Not quite.
As part of the current arrangement, guest Wi-Fi is included when we use Encore. If we bring in another AV provider, we have been told that the Wi-Fi will cost roughly $30,000.
Suddenly, the comparison isn't simply:
Encore proposal vs. outside AV proposal.
It is:
Encore proposal vs. outside AV proposal + $30,000 worth of Wi-Fi.
That changes the math considerably.
To be clear, this is one property and one event. I am not suggesting every Encore relationship works this way or that Encore itself dictates every concession offered by every hotel.
But if you have planned enough hotel meetings, you have probably encountered some version of this conversation.
You are technically allowed to bring another AV company.
Then you start asking about internet.
Or rigging.
Or power.
Or house labor.
Or patch fees.
Or what happens to that concession someone negotiated eighteen months ago.
And your theoretically wide-open vendor decision begins to feel considerably narrower.
This is one reason Encore’s proposed initial public offering is much more interesting to meeting professionals than it might appear.
Encore filed a Form S-1 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 10, 2026, outlining plans for an initial public offering and a potential listing on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol ECR. As of August 30, 2026, the company has not announced an IPO date or final offering price and remains privately held.
Normally, that would be a story for investors.
Except an S-1 requires a company to explain how its business actually works.
And Encore’s filing explains quite a bit about the business model meeting planners encounter every day.
First, a distinction worth making: Encore’s people are not this story
Before getting into the economics, I want to make something clear.
I have worked with a lot of Encore people over the years.
Many of them are terrific.
There are Encore project managers, technicians and production people I would happily work with tomorrow. They know their properties. They solve problems. They understand events. They know which ballroom panel hides the connection nobody labeled properly in 2017.
None of what follows is an argument that Encore’s onsite employees are bad at their jobs.
This is about the business structure around them.
Those are two very different conversations, and our industry occasionally has trouble separating them.
The interesting part of the IPO filing isn't whether Encore knows how to put on an event.
Clearly it does.
The interesting part is how Encore obtains, retains and grows business inside the venues where those events take place.
Encore has an enormous footprint inside event venues
Encore says it operates across approximately 2,200 contracted venues in 23 countries and produces more than 400,000 events annually for approximately 100,000 customers. Its venue footprint includes hotels, convention centers, corporate campuses, stadiums, arenas and other spaces.
In the United States, Encore says approximately 95% of its 2025 revenue came from customer events held in venues where it had multi-year contractual relationships. Those relationships include master service agreements with major hotel organizations and individual contracts with properties.
Encore names Accor, Hilton, Hyatt, IHG and Marriott among the major hotel companies with which it has master service agreements.
And these aren't short relationships.
Encore says hotel-chain and ownership-group master service agreements generally run four to six years, while individual venue contracts typically last about five years.
That creates something every business likes:
predictability.
Encore knows where it will be.
The venue knows who will be there.
Both parties can build processes, staffing and infrastructure around that relationship.
And the planner arriving with a conference next April walks into an ecosystem that may have been established years before the event RFP ever landed.
What does “exclusive” actually mean?
This is where some important nuance enters the conversation.
Encore's filing says that its individual venue contracts at nearly all of its approximately 2,200 venues establish the company as the exclusive on-site provider of event technologies.
But Encore also explicitly says those contracts generally do not prohibit event planners from hiring an outside provider.
An outside AV company can come into the venue and support an individual event.
What the contracts prevent is another company from being established in-house at that property alongside Encore.
That's an important distinction.
So the simplistic version of the argument—
Encore has an exclusive contract, therefore you are legally prohibited from hiring anyone else.
—is not supported by Encore's own filing.
But that is also not the end of the discussion.
Because there are at least three different kinds of choice.
Contractual choice
You are allowed to bring another provider.
Operational choice
That provider can realistically work in the building, access what it needs, coordinate with venue personnel and produce the event without unnecessary friction.
Economic choice
Using that provider doesn't trigger enough additional fees, lost concessions or mandatory services to make the alternative financially pointless.
Those three things are not necessarily the same.
And this is where Encore's filing becomes especially interesting.
Encore says it captures about 80% of the opportunity inside its venues
Encore reports an approximately 80% capture rate between 2019 and 2025 at venues where it already has a relationship.
In plain meeting-planner language, Encore is essentially saying:
When an event takes place inside one of its partner venues, Encore wins a very large percentage of the event-technology business available there.
That's already an impressive position.
But Encore doesn't describe the remaining 20% simply as business it didn't win.
It identifies that remaining share as a growth opportunity.
Under a section titled “Increasing Capture Rate Within Existing Venues,” Encore says its approximately 80% capture rate presents a potential 20% upside within its existing footprint.
It then describes a strategic plan developed with venue partners to improve that capture using “commission-aligned incentives” and local decision-making authority designed to speed approvals.
Read that again from the perspective of a meeting planner.
Encore already has an exclusive on-site position in roughly 2,200 venues.
It already captures approximately 80% of the available event business there.
And one element of its growth strategy is capturing more.
That isn't a secret accusation coming from an unhappy AV competitor.
It is a growth strategy Encore is presenting to potential investors.
Then there are the commissions
This may be the part of the filing meeting professionals should understand best.
Encore says it pays commissions to venue partners based on revenue generated from customers holding events at those venues.
The commission is generally calculated as a percentage of event revenue, with rates varying by venue and service type.
Encore also says some venue agreements contain minimum commission rates or amounts.
Encore says the vast majority of its contracts make it the only event-technology provider permitted to pay a commission to the venue.
And it explains the purpose quite plainly: Encore believes the commission structure aligns the incentives of Encore and its venue partners because both benefit from maximizing revenue.
From Encore's perspective, that's a feature.
From the hotel's perspective, it makes sense too.
The hotel creates revenue from meeting space, guestrooms, food and beverage—and now receives a share of event-technology revenue produced inside the property.
But planners should understand what that means.
When you are comparing an in-house AV proposal with an outside production proposal, you may not simply be comparing two companies' costs for screens, speakers, technicians and switchers.
You may be comparing two very different business structures.
One supplier has a long-term commercial relationship with the property in which some of the revenue generated by your event flows back to the venue.
The other doesn't.
That's important information when evaluating price.
Encore also makes upfront investments in venue relationships
The financial relationship goes beyond event-by-event commissions.
Encore says it makes certain up-front cash payments to venues when entering into new multi-year agreements, including hotel-chain agreements and individual venue contracts. The company classifies these as venue incentive payments.
Its filing also discusses fixed annual incentives, minimum guarantees and other payments related to venue contracts.
Again, none of this means something improper is happening.
Hotels provide access to valuable event business.
Encore provides staffing, technology, infrastructure and operational support.
Companies enter into commercial partnerships because both expect to benefit.
But I suspect many planners have never thought about the in-house AV relationship this way.
We see the person at the Encore desk down the hall from convention services and naturally think of AV as another hotel service.
It isn't.
Encore is an independent company with a substantial commercial relationship with the venue, built through long-term contracts, incentives and revenue-sharing arrangements.
Understanding that changes how I look at the AV conversation during hotel negotiations.
Why hotels like this model
It would be easy to make the hotel the villain here too.
That wouldn't be particularly useful.
There are legitimate reasons a hotel wants an embedded production partner.
An in-house provider understands the building.
It already knows the electrical system, internet infrastructure, loading rules, rigging points, storage locations and ballroom quirks.
Staff members are onsite.
Equipment may already be onsite.
Sales teams can quickly pull AV into proposals.
The hotel doesn't have to reinvent the production relationship for every event.
There is also accountability.
When Ballroom A has a problem fifteen minutes before doors, nobody has to locate the outside vendor who left for the warehouse an hour ago. There are people in the building whose ongoing relationship with the hotel depends upon fixing it.
That has real value.
And yes, the hotel earns revenue from the arrangement.
Hotels are businesses. This should not come as a shocking development.
The problem isn't that the hotel and AV provider have a financial relationship.
The question is whether the planner understands how that relationship affects their options and costs.
Why planners choose Encore—even when they have another option
I wouldn't automatically choose an outside provider simply because its equipment quote is cheaper.
There are plenty of events where using Encore makes perfect sense.
Maybe the price is competitive.
Maybe the Encore team at that property is excellent.
Maybe the event isn't complicated enough to justify moving equipment and personnel across the country.
Maybe using the house provider makes rigging, power and internet dramatically easier.
Maybe the planner doesn't want another vendor to manage.
Maybe there is enormous value in having a team that knows the room.
Those are legitimate purchasing considerations.
A $100,000 proposal from a provider that makes the entire event easier may be a better value than an $85,000 proposal that creates $25,000 worth of logistical headaches.
AV procurement shouldn't become a contest to see who can make the spreadsheet's bottom number smallest.
But planners deserve to understand the whole spreadsheet.
This is where my $30,000 Wi-Fi example bothers me
Return to that event I mentioned at the beginning.
If an outside production company can save the client tens of thousands of dollars, it seems reasonable to consider it.
But if choosing that provider causes approximately $30,000 in complimentary Wi-Fi to disappear, the financial decision changes dramatically.
Again, I cannot say from that experience alone how much of that decision belongs to Encore, how much belongs to the hotel, or how similar arrangements work elsewhere.
And that distinction matters.
But I can say this:
The AV decision and the venue decision are no longer economically independent.
That is the issue planners should pay attention to.
If Provider A costs $120,000 and Provider B costs $90,000, you might assume Provider B saves $30,000.
If selecting Provider B simultaneously causes another $30,000 venue charge to appear, your choice exists contractually.
Economically?
That's a more interesting discussion.
Encore has dramatically increased revenue per event
There's another number buried in the filing worth watching.
Encore says its average revenue per event increased nearly 88% between 2019 and 2025.
Encore attributes that growth to customers adopting more advanced technologies and experiential elements, and says recent year-over-year increases also reflect the company capturing larger and more complex events.
That distinction is important.
An 88% increase in revenue per event does not automatically mean Encore raised identical AV packages by 88%.
Events changed dramatically between 2019 and 2025.
LED became more common.
Hybrid production expanded.
More events incorporated streaming, advanced networking, scenic elements, content production and sophisticated video systems.
Labor costs changed.
Inflation happened.
Events themselves can be more technically complex.
So I would not use that number as evidence that Encore simply increased prices by 88%.
But Encore specifically identifies increasing average revenue per event as one of its growth strategies.
That matters.
Because investors are being told that Encore intends to grow not only by adding venues, but by generating more revenue from the events it already serves.
Meeting professionals should know that too.
Why the IPO itself matters
Encore generated approximately $3.4 billion in revenue in 2025.
It also reported a net loss of approximately $27.2 million, following net losses of approximately $176.1 million in 2024 and $132.0 million in 2023.
The company entered 2025 with substantial debt following a refinancing. Its term loan facility had a carrying value of approximately $2.33 billion at December 31, 2025, and the S-1 says Encore intends to use part of the IPO proceeds to repay a portion of that debt.
That doesn't mean Encore is in some sort of financial emergency. Its filing also reports substantial adjusted EBITDA and a dramatically smaller 2025 net loss than in 2024.
But going public changes the audience.
Quarterly performance becomes visible.
Growth gets discussed in earnings calls.
Margins matter.
Capture rates matter.
Revenue per event matters.
Investors will be able to see whether the strategies presented in this filing are working.
That does not allow us to predict that Encore will suddenly increase prices or become more restrictive.
We shouldn't pretend to know that.
What we can say is that Encore has already identified its growth levers for investors:
- increase average revenue per event;
- increase capture inside existing venues;
- expand into additional venues and markets;
- deepen customer relationships;
- add products and services.
If I am a planner, I want to know that.
And then there is Blackstone
There is another layer to this story that deserves more attention from our industry.
Blackstone acquired PSAV—the company that later adopted the Encore name—in 2018. Blackstone's announcement at the time specifically highlighted its experience and relationships in hotels, travel, trade shows and related sectors.
The current Encore filing says Blackstone will continue to control a majority of the voting power even after the proposed IPO, meaning Encore would qualify as a “controlled company” under NYSE governance rules.
Blackstone also owns Cvent.
In June 2023, an affiliate of Blackstone-managed private equity funds completed the acquisition of Cvent in a transaction valued at approximately $4.6 billion.
Think about where those two companies sit in the meetings ecosystem.
Cvent is deeply embedded in event registration, event management, venue sourcing and the hotel RFP process.
Encore is deeply embedded in the production and technology infrastructure inside thousands of venues.
That does not mean Encore and Cvent are secretly coordinating operations, pricing or strategy. I found no evidence supporting that, and it would be irresponsible to imply it.
What it does illustrate is something our industry doesn't discuss very often:
The brands planners interact with every day may sit inside a much larger web of private-equity ownership.
That subject deserves its own article.
Probably a fairly big one.
What should planners actually do with all of this?
Don't swear off Encore.
Don't automatically hire outside AV.
And definitely don't begin the conversation about AV exclusivity when production bidding starts three months before your conference.
By then, you may already have lost most of your leverage.
The time to understand the economics of in-house AV is during site selection and hotel contract negotiation.
Before signing the hotel agreement, ask:
Who controls AV?
- Who is the property's in-house or preferred AV provider?
- Is that provider exclusive?
- What exactly does “exclusive” cover?
- Are we explicitly permitted to use an outside production company?
What changes if we use outside AV?
- Are there additional fees?
- Do any hotel concessions disappear?
- Does complimentary or discounted attendee Wi-Fi disappear?
- Are internet rates different?
- Are there patch or connection fees?
- Is house supervisory labor required?
- Are there additional loading, storage or access requirements?
What must remain in-house?
- Rigging?
- Electrical power?
- Internet?
- Network access?
- House sound connections?
- Lighting controls?
- Labor supervision?
- Equipment already installed in the room?
What does it cost?
Ask for the current:
- internet rate structure;
- rigging rates;
- power rates;
- labor rates and minimums;
- outside-AV fees;
- patch fees;
- supervisory fees;
- service charges;
- applicable taxes.
And get them before signing the venue contract.
Because there is one question I would especially want answered now:
If I exercise my contractual right to bring an outside AV company, what changes financially?
Not later.
Not once the AV bid comes back.
Not during the production call when somebody casually mentions the $18,000 network charge.
Before signing.
The filing doesn't tell planners to avoid Encore. It tells us to understand the deal.
From an investor's perspective, Encore's business model has several attractive qualities.
It has long-term venue relationships.
It has an enormous installed footprint.
It operates as the exclusive on-site technology provider in thousands of venues.
It shares revenue with venue partners.
It already captures roughly 80% of the available event business within its existing properties.
It sees an opportunity to capture more.
And it is working to increase the amount of revenue generated by each event.
That is precisely the sort of story a company preparing for an IPO wants to tell investors.
But meeting professionals can read the exact same filing and ask a different question:
How much leverage do I have when I am the person paying the bill?
The answer isn't necessarily “none.”
Encore still has to compete for individual events, and its filing specifically acknowledges that planners can use outside providers.
But the economics surrounding that choice matter.
A hotel agreement can quietly determine the AV playing field years before anybody sends out an AV RFP.
That is the lesson I take from Encore's filing.
You may have a choice.
Just make sure you understand what exercising that choice is going to cost.
Planner’s In-House AV Negotiation Checklist
Before signing a venue agreement:
- Identify the property's preferred/in-house AV provider.
- Determine whether the arrangement is preferred, exclusive on-site, or fully exclusive.
- Put the right to use outside AV in writing.
- Ask which services must remain with the house provider.
- Request internet pricing before contracting.
- Request rigging and power pricing.
- Ask whether outside AV triggers supervisory or patch fees.
- Ask whether concessions are conditioned on using the in-house provider.
- Specifically confirm whether complimentary Wi-Fi remains if outside AV is selected.
- Request applicable labor rates, minimums and overtime rules.
- Identify any mandatory house labor.
- Ask about dock, storage and access restrictions.
- Ask whether installed AV equipment carries mandatory connection charges.
- Compare total event cost, not just competing AV proposals.
- Negotiate restrictions and concessions while the hotel is still competing for your business.
The wrong time to discover any of this is after the hotel contract is signed.
Sources & Further Reading
- Encore Inc. Form S-1 Registration Statement — SEC
- Encore Announces Public Filing of Registration Statement With the SEC
- Event Production Specialist Encore Files for IPO Amid Financial Losses — Business Travel News
- Encore’s SEC Filing Gives Show Organizers a Look Under the Hood of the In-House AV Business — Trade Show Executive
- PSAV Announces Agreement to Be Acquired by Blackstone
- Blackstone Completes Acquisition of Cvent