The event management market presents a diversity of investment opportunities, which investors can capitalize on either directly or indirectly. But in general, there are very few pure-play events management companies listed on major stock exchanges. Most players in this place trade in the OTC Markets while the rest are privately held. So, this limits opportunities for investors looking to pounce on one of the most interesting areas in the market.

However, for those looking for indirect investment opportunities in this market, there are several candidates that they can look at. To dissect this topic exhaustively, it is important to first identify the segments of the events management market that are likely to attract investors given the current developments in technology and marketing.

First up is the use of technology in the events management business. Most people would jump to conclude that most opportunities in this area of the events market exist in the gadgetry space.

However, according to some of the market players, this is not the case. One of the top players in the photography and videography sections of the events industry, Moritz Schmittat, the CEO of UK-based photography and film-making company, Schmittat.uk, says that a lot of opportunities right now are in the service delivery rather than gadgets used to deliver the service.  These sentiments are echoed by Alan Newton, co-founder of Eventopedia, who recently told Eventbrite that the use of technology-specifically-data has exploded in the last three years with the market now estimated to be worth nearly $30 billion. Other executives mention video streaming and virtual reality (VR) as areas that investors can target.

On the other hand, the head of Marketing of Givergy sees Virtual Reality (VR) playing a crucial role going forward whereas US Marketing Manager of Slido mentioned Video Streaming as one of the areas that investors can target.

Looking at the few sources mentioned here, it’s clear that technology is having an enormous impact on the events industry. So, what are some of the companies that investors can target?

Considering that this market is highly dominated by privately-held companies, the ideal opportunities will come from players that play a partial role.  Of course, in this case, we could talk of companies like Signet Jewelers (SIG), which as the name suggests focuses on the Jewelry side of things.

In the events management market, jewelry can play a crucial role in occasional events like weddings and engagement parties. At the current price of about $56 per share, Signet Jewelers is down 62% from its 2015 high of $150 per share. The company’s stock has experienced some rebounds during a prolonged downward trend, but there has been no indication that it could reach the levels reached in October 2015.

Some of the pure-play event management firms have been acquired by private equity firms a case in point being Active Network, which was acquired by Vista Equity Partners in 2013. This clearly shows how aggressive companies have become in the event management industry thereby further limiting opportunities for retail investors to pounce.

Conclusion

In summary, the event management industry is becoming increasingly inaccessible to individual investors because institutional investors and private equity firms have moved swiftly to capitalize whenever an interesting opportunity cropped up.

In the short-term, opportunities for individual investors might be limited to players selling accessories for event management companies including those involved in the weddings industry like Signet Jewelers and Martha Stewart through its parent Sequential Brands (SQBG) among others.