Michael Fleck is co-founder of Synergy Effect and Pollinate Brandcasting
The EventsAir State of Events 2026 report paints a familiar picture: event teams run flat out, but budgets barely move. Almost 60% of teams expect little or no budget growth, yet executives ask them to deliver more personal, premium experiences. That is worrying, but it is just a symptom. The real problem is that event measurement hasn’t caught up with how business actually works today.
Two recent articles show where things are heading. Brad Gillespie‘s When Events Report to Revenue describes companies that put events under revenue leadership. These companies judge events on pipeline and retention, not registrations and satisfaction scores.
Umang Gupta‘s How Industry Events Are Becoming Year-round Engagement Platforms argues events are shifting from three-day bursts to a 365-day pulse. Real value lies in ongoing community and return on time engaged, or ROTE. The world has moved toward always-on, relationship-driven engagement, while many planners still treat events as one-off shows measured by headcount.
EventsAir’s data shows improvement as planners now track engagement and post-event outcomes. But ROI often remains secondary, which explains flat budgets. If your story relies on ‘the room was full and people seemed happy,’ executives struggle to justify more money because other channels clearly prove their impact. When you position events closer to revenue, success means creating a pipeline, accelerating deals, and securing better renewals. These answers speak the language of the executive team.
Adding a human layer to event tracking
ROTE adds a human layer. Gupta’s point is simple: the rarest resource isn’t budget, it’s people’s time. When you ask customers or members to spend hours with you, you must show what that time did for them, what they learned, and who they met, alongside what it achieved for your business. When we cannot answer that clearly, executives pressure the spend.
Rethinking formats and next steps
One answer is rethinking the format. Brandcasting treats the core event as a content engine for the whole year. High-quality production and TV-style formats extend the live experience to people watching from their office or home, offering easy catch-up later. When you spread that investment over 80% of your community instead of 10 to 20%, you lower the cost per person and make the event feel more inclusive.
When events connect to CRM and marketing tools, every interaction – who watched, clicked, or asked questions – becomes a useful signal for sales and membership teams. Events stop acting as just a cost and start functioning as part of the revenue engine. Well-designed online formats can also cut emissions by 95 to 99% compared to flying everyone to one city.
So what should teams do? Implement these four shifts:
• Make it structural: Tie events to revenue, membership, and mission outcomes, rather than just logistics.
• Make it ongoing: Treat events as part of a longer journey, connecting the before, during, and after, instead of running standalone moments.
• Make it measurable: Track pipeline, retention, sponsor outcomes, and ROTE, rather than just registrations and satisfaction.
• Make it scalable: Use formats that reach more people without exploding costs, and respect their time as much as your budget.
If EventsAir shows where we currently stand with high demand and flat budgets, then Gillespie and Gupta point to where we need to go. We must build events that clearly serve people and business, and we must prove that value. Get there, and we will spend less time defending budgets and more time driving outcomes that matter.