US conference sponsorships run from a median $2,225 entry package to a median $16,000 top package

Findings

1. Across 569 US conferences and trade shows dated 2025 to 2028 that publish sponsorship prices in dollars, the median price of an event's cheapest package is $2,225 and the median price of its most expensive is $16,000, and the median event's top package costs 7.3 times its cheapest.
2. By package name, median prices climb from $4,000 for Bronze (193 packages at 187 events) to $6,501 for Silver (302 at 284), $10,000 for Gold (319 at 299), $15,000 for Platinum (285 at 261) and $20,000 for Diamond (132 at 123), and an exhibit booth or table has a median price of $3,550 (138 at 92).
3. Top packages rise with audience size, from a median $14,500 at events under 500 attendees (126 events) to $30,000 at events of 2,000 to 9,999 (75 events).
4. The median event with a public sponsor list names 6 sponsors (944 events), 290 of those events (30.7%) name 2 or fewer, and events of 10,000 or more attendees name a median of 9 (131 events).
5. Of 54,357 companies matched to a web domain, 7,571 (13.9%) are named at two or more events and hold 30.5% of those companies' 85,375 listings, and Microsoft (67 events), Google (54) and Amazon (44) are named most often.
6. The 98 trade show floor plans and exhibitor directories loaded in full list between 49 and 4,170 exhibitors each, and seven of the shows list more than 2,000.

How to read these numbers. Prices are the ones each event prints in its sponsorship prospectus or on its sponsorship page, in US dollars, for events held in the United States. The entry price is the cheapest item on an event's published menu, which is sometimes a small add-on such as a bag insert, and the top price is the most expensive. Medians describe events that publish prices, and events that sell sponsorship only by quote may price differently. The database holds a fraction of all events, so the number of events a company is named at is a floor.

Revised 29 September 2026. Every number was read again that day. The changes are listed under Revisions, above the data files at the end of this note.

What sponsorship costs

Diamond20,000 USD

Platinum15,000 USD

Gold10,000 USD

Silver6,501 USD

Bronze4,000 USD

Exhibit booth or table3,550 USD

Source: Carroway Research analysis of the published sponsorship prices of 569 US conferences and trade shows, read on 29 September 2026. Packages, events and the middle half of prices for each row are in prices-by-tier-name.csv.

The 569 US events in the price sample publish 4,107 priced packages between them, a median of 5.0 per event. The median cheapest package costs $2,225 and the median most expensive package $16,000. The spread is wide: the middle half of events start between $1,000 and $5,000 and top out between $8,000 and $35,000. Within one event, the median top package costs 7.3 times the cheapest.

Entry prices bunch at round figures. 281 of the 569 events start at $2,000 or less and 324 at $2,500 or less, so the median event, the 285th, sits in the thin gap between those two groups. A small change in the sample can move the median anywhere from $2,000 to $2,500.

Packages with metal and gem names follow the order their names suggest. The median Bronze package costs $4,000 and the median Diamond package $20,000, with Silver, Gold and Platinum at $6,501, $10,000 and $15,000. Each band overlaps the next. The middle half of Gold packages runs from $5,000 to $20,000, and the middle half of Platinum packages from $10,000 to $30,000. A name alone does not set a price. An exhibit booth or table, counted only when the package is the booth, table or space itself, without add-ons such as corner fees, has a median price of $3,550 (138 packages at 92 events), a little below the median Bronze package.

Top prices rise with the audience an event states, from $14,500 under 500 attendees to $30,000 at 2,000 to 9,999. Entry prices move less, with band medians between $2,000 and $5,000. Only 33 events of 10,000 or more attendees publish prices, too few to read on their own. Events that state no attendance publish the lowest top prices, a median of $13,750 (200 events).

We left out 72 events found through two searches that named a dollar amount, "platinum sponsor" "$10,000" and "gold sponsor" "$5,000", because those searches pick documents by their prices. Those events publish higher prices, a median entry of $3,000 and a median top package of $20,750. With them included (640 events), the median entry price is $2,500 and the median top price $19,750.

How many sponsors an event names

Sponsor lists are short at every size. The median event names 6 sponsors, and the median event of 10,000 or more attendees names 9. The counts are names that could be read on the event's page or document, so a logo wall without readable names counts low.

Partners and media partners are counted apart from sponsors and are rare across the whole database: 407 partner rows at 37 editions and 88 media partner rows at 14. Lists of past sponsors, such as a prospectus page of last year's supporters, are also kept apart (629 rows at 16 editions) and are not counted as sponsors.

Companies at more than one event

Microsoft67 events

Google54 events

Amazon44 events

IBM41 events

Deloitte40 events

Siemens27 events

Meta25 events

Accenture24 events

Adobe24 events

Dell24 events

Cisco23 events

Intel Corporation23 events

NVIDIA23 events

Samsung22 events

Oracle21 events

PwC20 events

Source: Carroway Research analysis of public sponsor, exhibitor and partner lists, read on 29 September 2026. Companies are counted by web domain, so a unit that shares its parent's domain counts as the parent. Events by role, and the 68 companies named at 10 or more events, are in top-companies.csv.

Of 54,357 companies matched to a web domain and named as a sponsor, exhibitor, partner or media partner, 46,786 (86.1%) appear at one event in the database. The 7,571 companies named at two or more events (13.9%) hold 26,020 of the 85,375 listings (30.5%). Sixty-eight companies are named at 10 or more events. The three named most often appear mostly as sponsors: Microsoft at 52 of its 67 events, Google at 46 of 54 and Amazon at 29 of 44.

The share at two or more events rose from 8.3% on 23 September for two reasons. Exhibitor lists grew from 21 editions to 236, so trade show exhibitors now make up most of the companies counted. And between 24 and 29 September the database matched 20,196 company records to a web domain through a search step and 9,275 through a company database. A matched domain lets the count join listings of the same company at different events. Sponsors and exhibitors repeat at similar rates: 11.9% of 9,644 companies named as sponsors are named as a sponsor at two or more events, and 12.7% of 46,243 exhibitors exhibit at two or more.

A company named at one event here may sponsor many events the database does not hold, so the share at two or more events is a floor. Companies whose names could not be matched to a web domain are left out of this count, because the same name cannot be matched reliably from one event to the next.

Trade show floors

CES 20264,170 exhibitors

PACK EXPO International 20262,694 exhibitors

Summer Fancy Food Show 20262,577 exhibitors

Natural Products Expo West 20272,354 exhibitors

KBIS and International Builders' Show 20262,340 exhibitors

PACK EXPO Las Vegas 20252,317 exhibitors

AAPEX 20262,135 exhibitors

AHR Expo 20261,949 exhibitors

MD&M West 20261,882 exhibitors

International Manufacturing Technology Show 20261,843 exhibitors

Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) 20261,752 exhibitors

Fabtech 20251,728 exhibitors

BIO International Convention 20261,605 exhibitors

NPE: The Plastics Show 20271,587 exhibitors

SuperZoo 20251,225 exhibitors

Source: each show's public floor plan, exhibitor directory or exhibitor list export, read by 29 September 2026. Lists for shows that had not yet taken place may grow. All 98 lists are in exhibitors-per-show.csv.

For 98 trade shows the full exhibitor list was read from the show's public floor plan, exhibitor directory or exhibitor list export, with each company's name and booth. The lists run from 49 exhibitors at the SNMMI Mid-Winter Meeting 2026 to 4,170 at CES 2026. Seven shows list more than 2,000 companies each, led by CES 2026, PACK EXPO International 2026 and the Summer Fancy Food Show 2026. KBIS 2026 shared its floor plan with the International Builders' Show, held alongside it that week, so that row counts both shows. Lists for shows that had not taken place by 29 September 2026, such as PACK EXPO International 2026 and Natural Products Expo West 2027, may grow. Two lists come from 2024 editions, and a few of the shows take place outside the United States, such as Bett UK and BUILDEX Vancouver.

These 98 shows were loaded because their exhibitor lists can be read in full. They are examples of large floors, and shows without a readable list are missing.

Method

Source. The database behind ConferenceDB, which publishes these sponsor and exhibitor lists and prices for free: 2,697 conferences and trade shows and their public sponsor and exhibitor lists, collected from 31 July to 29 September 2026. It holds 3,022 editions, one per event and year, and was read on 29 September 2026 with read-only queries. The first version of this note used the same database as read on 23 September 2026.

How events enter. A daily collector searches the web for event pages on ticketing and registration platforms and for sponsorship and exhibitor prospectus documents. It also reads the official sites of events taken from public event lists and from a hand-checked list of large vendor-run events, and loads full exhibitor lists from trade show floor plans, exhibitor directories and exhibitor list exports. Of the 3,022 editions, 932 were found through a prospectus document, 1,506 through a ticketing or registration page, 419 on the event's own website or sponsor page, and 165 from a floor plan, exhibitor directory or exhibitor list export.

What is read from each page. A language model reads each page or document and records the event's name, dates, location, stated attendance, the companies it names as sponsors, exhibitors or partners with their role and tier, and the sponsorship packages it sells with each price as printed. A sponsor page found on the event's own site is used only when the model judges it to be about the same event, and on a website that hosts many events the page must sit under that event's own section. Exhibitor lists from floor plans, directories and list exports keep company name, booth and website only.

Companies. A company counts as matched to a web domain when the exhibitor list gives its website or a search step matched its name to a domain. Companies are counted by domain. A few domains are stored under the name of one unit or a spelling variant, such as samsung.com as Samsung Ads. They are printed with the parent's name, since every unit on the domain is counted, and queries.sql lists them.

Repairs before the read. On 23 September 2026 the database removed attendee lists that had been stored as sponsors, moved past-sponsor and exhibitor lists into their own roles, removed tier headings such as "Gold" that had been read as company names, merged duplicate events and read prospectus documents again for prices. Between 24 and 29 September it merged more duplicate events, read some package prices again, removed list rows filed under shared web hosting domains and matched more company names to web domains.

Scope. Every analysis except the exhibitor list counts uses editions whose start date, or edition year when there is no date, falls in 2025 to 2028: 2,768 of the 3,022. 155 earlier editions, 3 editions dated after 2028 and 96 undated editions are excluded. When an event has several editions in scope, each analysis keeps the one with the most rows of the kind being measured, then the latest.

Prices. Only editions in the United States with prices printed in US dollars. Prices with another currency marker or a GST note, prices under $250, per-square-foot and per-person rates, package names that describe a ticket or pass, and 7 rows copied from the database's own web pages are removed. No other package in the database has one of the database's own pages as its source. After those rules, 4,716 packages at 657 editions remain. We then left out 73 editions of 72 events (517 packages) found through the two dollar-amount searches described above. When a price is printed as a range or with "from" or "plus", the first number counts. Packages are grouped by name when the name holds exactly one of Diamond, Platinum, Gold, Silver or Bronze. The booth or table group holds packages named for an exhibit booth, table or space, without add-ons such as corner fees or upgrades.

Medians. Medians and quartiles are interpolated when they fall between two package prices, so a few, such as the $3,550 median for an exhibit booth or table and the $13,209 lower quartile for Diamond packages, sit between two printed prices.

ConferenceDB's own figures. Since the afternoon of 29 September 2026, ConferenceDB's pricing page counts only packages published in US dollars, under the same package rules as this note, and reads each price's currency from a label stored with the price: 745 conferences, a median entry package of $2,500 and a median top package of $20,000, with 171 more conferences left out because they price only in other currencies or with a plain $ at an event outside the US. Two choices in this note account for most of the difference. Keeping only events in the United States dated 2025 to 2028 brings the count to 639 and leaves both medians at $2,500 and $20,000. Leaving out the 72 events found through searches that named a dollar amount then gives 568 events, a median entry package of $2,263 and a median top package of $16,360. Counting each event's edition with the most priced packages, as this note does, instead of its latest brings the top median to $16,000. The last small gap, 568 events against 569 and $2,263 against $2,225, comes from the site's stored currency labels, which differ from this note's price-text rules on a few rows. Every step is in price-sensitivity.csv.

Size bands. Stated attendance comes from the event's own page or document. 1,318 of the 2,768 editions in scope state one, and many state a round figure such as 500 or more.

Sponsor counts. Companies with the sponsor role at editions in scope. Exhibitors, partners, media partners and past sponsors are not counted as sponsors.

Revisions

29 September 2026. This note first ran on 23 September 2026 with data read that day. The database grew over the next six days, so every number was read again on 29 September with the same rules (queries.sql lists the query changes). Priced US events rose from 471 to 569. The median entry package moved from $2,500 to $2,225 because the median now falls in the gap between 281 events that start at $2,000 or less and 324 at $2,500 or less. The median top package moved from $15,000 to $16,000 and the median Bronze package from $3,500 to $4,000, while the Gold, Platinum and Diamond medians held. The share of companies named at two or more events rose from 8.3% to 13.9%, as exhibitor lists grew from 21 editions to 236 and more company names were matched to a web domain. The exhibitor list count now includes Map Your Show list exports, which gives 98 shows where the 23 September query gives 60 on the same data. The 23 September figures are in revision-2026-09-23.csv.

29 September 2026, afternoon. The paragraph on ConferenceDB's own figures said its pricing page counted every price from any currency at face value, which was not accurate. Its price parser converted euros, pounds and francs at fixed rates and read other prices written with a dollar sign, such as C$ and A$, as US dollars. ConferenceDB then changed its figures twice that afternoon. At 15:34 ET it began counting only packages priced in US dollars, which gave 691 conferences. At 16:15 ET it began storing each price's currency, which counts a plain $ at an event with no recorded country as US dollars. Its pricing page moved from 943 conferences and a median top package of $18,750 to 745 conferences and $20,000. The paragraph now gives the current figures and the choices in this note that account for the difference. No figure in this note changed.

Data

The CSV files below hold every number in this note, and queries.sql holds the query behind each one. price-ladder-by-size.csv, prices-by-tier-name.csv, entry-prices-near-median.csv and price-sensitivity.csv hold the prices. sponsors-per-event.csv, repeat-companies.csv, repeat-companies-by-role.csv and top-companies.csv hold the sponsor counts and the companies named at the most events. exhibitors-per-show.csv holds the exhibitor list counts, and the two chart files hold the rows shown in Exhibits 2 and 3. rows-by-role.csv counts every list row by role, coverage.csv traces the counts from the full database to the rows analyzed, and revision-2026-09-23.csv sets the 23 September figures beside the 29 September ones. They are free to reuse with credit to Carroway Research.

• Entry and top sponsorship prices by audience size CSV, 6 rows, 0.5 KBOne row per stated-attendance band and one for all events: events, priced packages, the 25th, 50th and 75th percentile of each event's cheapest and most expensive package in US dollars, the median number of priced packages and the median ratio of top to cheapest.
• Published prices by package name CSV, 6 rows, 0.3 KBOne row per package name (Diamond, Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze, exhibit booth or table): packages, events, and the 25th percentile, median, 75th percentile, lowest and highest price in US dollars.
• Entry prices near the median CSV, 21 rows, 0.4 KBEach entry price from $1,500 to $3,500 in the main price sample: events whose cheapest package costs exactly that, the running count of events at or below it, and all events in the sample.
• Prices with and without dollar-amount searches, and on ConferenceDB's pricing page CSV, 11 rows, 1.3 KBMedian cheapest and most expensive package for the main sample, for the events left out because the search that found them named a dollar amount, and for both together; ConferenceDB's pricing page under the rules it used before 15:34 ET, from 15:34 to 16:15 ET and since 16:15 ET on 29 September 2026; its current rules narrowed step by step to this note's scope and edition rule; and the conferences its current figures leave out.
• Sponsors named per event by audience size CSV, 6 rows, 0.5 KBOne row per stated-attendance band and one for all events: events, sponsor names, the 25th, 50th, 75th and 90th percentile of sponsors per event, and events naming 2 or fewer or 30 or more sponsors, as counts and shares.
• Companies by number of events named at CSV, 7 rows, 0.2 KBCompanies matched to a web domain, grouped by how many distinct events name them as sponsor, exhibitor, partner or media partner: companies and listings, as counts and shares of the total.
• Companies named at two or more events, by role CSV, 3 rows, 0.2 KBCompanies matched to a web domain, counted within one role at a time (sponsor, exhibitor, or partner and media partner together): companies, and the number and share named in that role at two or more events.
• Companies named at 10 or more events CSV, 68 rows, 2.2 KBOne row per company named at 10 or more distinct events dated 2025 to 2028: web domain, events, and events by role (sponsor, exhibitor, partner or media partner). Domains stored under a unit's name are printed with the parent's name.
• Companies named at 20 or more events CSV, 16 rows, 0.5 KBThe rows of top-companies.csv named at 20 or more events, shown in Exhibit 2.
• Exhibitors per trade show floor plan or directory CSV, 98 rows, 6.0 KBOne row per show whose full exhibitor list was loaded from its public floor plan, exhibitor directory or exhibitor list export: start date, exhibitors listed, exhibitors with a booth number, and the kind of list.
• The 15 largest exhibitor lists CSV, 15 rows, 1.0 KBThe 15 largest lists in exhibitors-per-show.csv, shown in Exhibit 3.
• List rows by role CSV, 6 rows, 0.3 KBEvery company row in the database by role (sponsor, exhibitor, partner, media partner, past sponsor): rows, editions, companies, and rows whose company is matched to a web domain.
• Coverage and exclusions CSV, 30 rows, 2.2 KBEvents, editions, list rows and priced packages at each step from the full database to the rows analyzed, with collection dates, how editions were found, and company records matched to a web domain between 24 and 29 September.
• Figures read on 23 and 29 September 2026 CSV, 50 rows, 3.8 KBThe figures this note first published from data read on 23 September 2026, beside the same figures read on 29 September 2026, with the file each one comes from.
• SQL queries CSV, 42.8 KBThe read-only query behind every CSV in this note, with the price, scope and size-band rules and the changes made for the 29 September revision.