Media and entertainment industry leaders will converge on Las Vegas for the much-anticipated 2025 NAB Show, which kicks off Saturday.
In anticipation of the event, I caught up with NAB President and CEO Curtis LeGeyt, and we started by discussing the show’s mission.
“We want to be on the cutting edge and as a destination for more leaders in television, radio, streaming, and digital media can come together and explore and really be a forum to discuss the evolution in content creation, distribution, and monetization, all of which has been heavily disrupted, and where that is going, and then to break it down into verticals to examine trends within that.
“For us, that’s a real focus right now on the impact of AI. It’s a real expansion of our mission to ensure that we are providing that same forum for the creator economy, and it’s really trying to ensure that we are discussing and putting some programming together around the highest, most visible topics. In this case, sports is at the very, very top of that list for the NAB show this year.”
The show is huge, and I tasked LeGeyt with providing me with a 30,000-foot flyover of the event.
“We’re expecting to have 1,100 exhibitors on-site, and these companies provide all the tools media companies need to create content, distribute that content, and analyze what’s happening in the marketplace. We are expecting over 60,000 attendees. We are on pace for that level of registration.”
“Interestingly, at least as of today, more than half of our current registrants are first-time NAB show registrants. So we look at that as a significant benchmark in terms of how we are expanding the appeal of this show because the history of this show is very entrenched in your incumbent media and being a destination that the traditional players in our space see as a must-have year over year.”
“We understand that incumbent media is to some degree contracting right now and that for us to be relevant in the media landscape as the destination for content creators, regardless of how you are distributing that content, we need to get outside of our traditional four corners and expand the attendee base.”
“I think these numbers demonstrate to me that we are doing that effectively, and our focus on the creator economy is starting to pay off, and ensuring that if you are in content creation, distribution, and whether you’re doing that at the Walt Disney Company, or whether you’re a social media influencer on TikTok, this is the place for you to come, see the latest tools, and engage in the most meaningful conversations of what’s happening in the space.”
With so many first-time attendees, what advice does LeGeyt have to offer?
“I think in a perfect world, we would spread this show over 10 days, so you’d have the opportunity to experience everything. But that is not the world that we live in.
“What we have tried to do is to provide some level of organization based on your interests. If you are engaged in sports media, whether that is on the content, on the creation and production side of it, whether it’s on the business side of it, or you’re trying to understand the direction that college sports is going.”
“We’ve put together a sports summit to ensure that over the course of three days, you can see a range of programming that’s going to hit at the direction of just what’s going on right now as it relates to sports, the vulcanization, frankly, of sports rights, how NIL fits into all of this, how trends in women’s sports are shaping the future of the rights landscape. We’ve organized it in a way that allows you to do all of it.”
The same goes for content creation.
“If you are doing content creation with a focus on streaming, we’ve put together a set of programming, and all of this is sort of co-located to the best that we can in areas where your key exhibitors are going to be adjacent on the floor.”
“If you are our core membership at the NAB, which is local television and radio stations, we have programming everywhere conference that is focused on trends and local television. We do a small and medium market radio forum designed to give local radio stations the tools they need in this disrupted media landscape to compete for advertising dollars and audience.”
“We have tried to simplify this to give you a menu that allows you to see a lot that’s very focused on that vertical. The complication is so many of these things overlap. I can’t guarantee you that you won’t have to make very, very tough decisions on one session versus another.”
An on-site app will assist attendees in organizing their schedules.
“Our show site and the app that will be live when you’re on-site at the NAB show can help you curate the type of hands-on experience you want. And by the way, that’s only really talking about programming. Then you’ve got what’s happening on the show floor.”
“We’ve tried to create hands-on experiences, especially in AI. We have an AI innovation pavilion that allows you to be very hands-on with the tools shaping how AI influences content creation and audience experience. And then we also have a creator lab that’s designed for, again, that more individual creator economy hyper-focused on the tools that an individual creator needs to expand their reach with new audiences.”
I asked LeGeyt if there was a moment or two during his time with the NAB Show that really stood out in his memory.
“This is a hundred-year-old show, so I’ve got a fairly limited vantage point relative to the century that it has been in the relevant center of the media landscape. But for me, it’s 2022 coming out of COVID, and while we didn’t have the type of numbers we will see in Las Vegas this year, I think there was a magic to 2022. Coming back with the level of excitement from our exhibitor community to our attendees of just being back together.”
“Being the first forum in the media space to bring these different corners back together to talk about this impact of technology on all this disruption in media that COVID had accelerated. Typically, we all do a lot of business travel. There are a lot of different conferences out there, especially when you’re talking about a hundred-year-old trade show. At times, you can take it for granted that this is what I do in April every year, and I think in 2022, no one took it for granted. You could feel the excitement.”
Like most trade shows, peer networking is also a significant component.
“Especially with the level of disruption, networking has never been more important. Every media company and every piece of technology that fuels them is exploring how to better engage with their audiences. What’s the next frontier?”
“I think the value of the NAB show is to be in new rooms, and we’re providing those forums to ensure, again, whether you are the Walt Disney Company or an individual content creator, this is going to be the place that you come to explore that next business relationship that’s going to help you as you’re charting the path forward.”
In closing, LeGeyt expressed his enthusiasm for this year’s show.
“I would just say how excited we are, particularly about the focus of this year’s show. We’ve heard loud and clear, not just from our past attendees but the types of attendees we are trying to attract. Expanding the floor presence of relevant exhibitors and programming to capture the creator economy and to dig deep on those areas that are top-of-mind for media executives.”
“Our focus on those areas, sports, and this business of media disruption, in particular, is very timely, and I’m proud of the content and programming around that at this year’s show.”
The NAB Show is April 5-9 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
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Jeff Lynn serves as Editor of Barrett Media’s Music Radio coverage. Prior to joining Barrett Media, Jeff spent time programming in Milwaukee, Omaha, Cleveland, Des Moines, and Madison for multiple radio groups, including iHeartMedia, Townsquare Media, NRG Media, and Entercom (now Audacy). He also worked as a Country Format Editor for All Access until the outlet shut down in August 2023.
To get in touch with Jeff by email, reach him at Jeff@BarrettMedia.com.
