The Hotel AV Monopoly Is Going Public — And Your Event Budget Is Why It Can

I spent time this spring reading Encore's IPO prospectus from cover to cover. All 155 pages. I used tools to help organize the analysis, but the read was mine, and so is every opinion that follows. I am not a financial analyst. I am an event producer who has spent decades watching what happens on the other side of hotel contracts, and what I found in this document made me angry enough to write about it.

If you plan corporate events, you need to read this. Not because Encore is going public — that is Wall Street's problem. Because this filing, which is a legal document submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission, contains the most honest description of how the hotel AV industry actually works that I have ever seen. And what it describes should make every corporate event buyer question every invoice they have ever signed inside a major hotel property.

First, Let's Be Clear About What Encore Is

Encore is the company that absorbed PSAV in 2019 and spent the following years rebranding the combined entity under the Encore name. If you have been working in the events industry for more than a few years, you knew them as PSAV. You probably had strong feelings about them. The rebrand did not change the model. It cleaned up the reputation long enough to file for an IPO.

Encore operates in 23 countries across approximately 2,200 hotel and venue properties. They employ over 13,000 people. They generated $3.4 billion in revenue last year. By any measure of scale, they are the dominant force in hotel-based event technology. And that dominance is not accidental, and it is not built on being the best. It is built on a contractual architecture that was designed, from the ground up, to make them the only realistic option at the properties they control.

That architecture is worth understanding in detail, because it is your money that makes it run.

The Machine and How It Works

Encore's business model has three interlocking parts.

The first is the Master Service Agreement. Encore signs long-term contracts directly with major hotel chains — Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt, Accor, IHG — naming themselves as the preferred event technology provider across that chain's entire portfolio of properties. These agreements run four to six years. The corporate offices of those hotel chains then apply pressure on individual properties to contract with Encore. The filing is candid about this dynamic: "The corporate offices of major hotel chains may influence the decisions of their individual properties." That is a careful way of saying that a property manager who wants to use an independent AV company is going to have a conversation with someone above them about why they are stepping outside the chain agreement.

The second part is the individual venue contract. Below the chain-level MSA, Encore signs a separate contract with each individual property. That contract makes Encore the exclusive on-site provider of event technology at that location. Their equipment stays in the building. Their staff is embedded on-site permanently. No competing provider can maintain an on-site presence. The filing states this clearly and repeatedly: the contracts "prevent non-Encore team members and technology from being in-house at these venues."

The third part is the commission. And this is where it gets personal for your budget.

For every dollar Encore bills your company inside a contracted venue, the hotel receives a percentage back as a revenue-based commission. This is not a small fee. This is not an administrative arrangement. Last year, Encore paid $1.23 billion in revenue-based commissions to hotel partners. To put that number in perspective: their total global workforce expense was $1.12 billion. Encore paid more in hotel commissions than they paid every single employee and crew member combined, across 23 countries and 400,000 events.

That is not a footnote. That is the business model.

And to ensure no competitor can disrupt this arrangement, the filing discloses that the vast majority of Encore's venue contracts make them the only provider legally permitted to pay a commission to that hotel. A competitor cannot offer the hotel the same deal. Even if an independent AV company delivered a better product at a lower price, the hotel would receive nothing from that transaction. Encore has pre-emptively purchased the hotel's loyalty, and you are the one funding the purchase.

Who Is Actually Paying for This — And Why the Price Keeps Going Up

Encore is not a profitable company.

In 2025 they lost $27.2 million. In 2024 they lost $176.1 million. In 2023 they lost $132 million. Three consecutive years of net losses on over $3 billion in annual revenue. They are not losing money because the business is struggling. They are losing money because they are carrying $2.33 billion in debt, and in 2025 their interest expense alone was $226.9 million — which actually exceeded their operating income by 101%.

This debt did not appear from nowhere. Blackstone, the private equity firm that owns Encore, has used the company as a leveraged asset since acquiring it years ago. The IPO is Blackstone's exit strategy. They are taking Encore public, transferring the debt load to public market shareholders, and collecting their return. After the offering closes, Blackstone will still hold majority voting control of the company. They get the liquidity. The public gets the debt.

None of that would matter to you except for one thing: a company with $2.33 billion in debt and an interest bill that exceeds its operating income has exactly one path to growth. It cannot meaningfully cut costs — their largest cost is the hotel commission, which is contractually obligated and tied directly to revenue. It cannot easily reduce its workforce below operational minimums across 2,200 properties. What it can do is raise prices on the customers who have no competitive alternative.

The data shows this is exactly what is happening.

Encore serviced 416,000 events in 2023. By 2025 that number had fallen to 403,000 — a decline of 13,000 events over two years. Fewer clients. But in the same window, average revenue per U.S. event jumped from $8,300 to $9,700. That is a 17% increase in what they extract per event while the number of events they service is declining.

Encore wants to frame this as clients choosing more complex, higher-value experiences. That is partially true. But the simpler and more uncomfortable explanation is this: when you control the power distribution, the in-house internet infrastructure, and the rigging points at 2,200 properties across the country, you can charge whatever you decide to charge because the client seated across from you has nowhere else to turn for those specific services. There is no market rate for Encore's house internet at a Marriott ballroom. There is only Encore's rate. And that rate has been going up every year while a $226 million annual interest bill waits to be fed.

What This Does to the Industry

I want to be direct about something that rarely gets said in polite industry conversations.

The Encore model is not just expensive for clients. It is damaging to the events industry as a whole, and the harm is structural and cumulative.

When a single company controls the on-site technology relationship at 2,200 venues across 23 countries, and when that company's revenue model depends on hotel commissions rather than client satisfaction, the incentive to innovate disappears. Why invest in better creative capabilities when the contract guarantees the revenue regardless of quality? Why develop deeper technical talent when the business model is about venue coverage, not event excellence? Why compete on the merit of the work when the hotel already made the choice for the client before they ever walked in the door?

The result, after years of this model operating at scale, is what anyone who has worked a hotel event knows to be true: templated production, under-resourced crews, equipment that gets the job done but rarely elevates the experience, and a service posture that reflects the fact that the client was not really choosing the vendor to begin with. Encore services 403,000 events a year across 13,000 people at 2,200 venues. The math on genuine creative customization does not work at that volume. The model does not allow it.

The deeper damage is to independent producers, boutique AV companies, and the skilled freelance technical community that has spent decades building genuine craft in this industry. When the hotel system is locked up by a company paying $1.23 billion a year in commissions to maintain exclusivity, independent talent cannot get a fair shot at the work. Not because they are not good enough. Because the hotel has a financial incentive to never let them in the room. Every independent producer who loses a hotel-based event to the in-house vendor by default is a consequence of this model. Every skilled technical director who has watched an Encore crew underdeliver on a show they could have elevated is paying the price of a contractual arrangement that had nothing to do with quality.

The industry produces better work when the best vendors win the work. The Encore model is designed to ensure that outcome never has to be tested.

What You Can Actually Do About It

Here is the part of this article that I want corporate event buyers to read twice.

You have more leverage than you think, and Encore's own IPO filing confirms it.

The contracts between Encore and hotels do not prohibit you from bringing in an outside provider. The filing says this explicitly, multiple times: event planners retain the option to use outside providers. What the contracts prevent is another company maintaining a permanent on-site presence. For your specific event, you can engage an independent production company for the design, the creative, the show production management, the content, and the technical execution using outside equipment and labor.

What you cannot fully escape are the hard exclusive services tied to the building's physical infrastructure. House power distribution, in-building internet connectivity, and fixed rigging points are legitimately controlled by the property and typically must flow through Encore at the venue's contracted rates. These are real constraints and it is worth knowing which costs fall into this category before you walk into a budget conversation.

But everything else is negotiable. Cameras, LED screens, audio systems, lighting design, show direction, content production, creative direction, talent management, run of show, technical direction — none of that is exclusive to Encore. All of it can be put in front of the open market. Most corporate event buyers never do this because the friction of pushing back against the in-house vendor feels like more trouble than the savings justify. That friction is not accidental. It is part of the design.

There are four things you should do before your next hotel event.

Ask your hotel, in writing, for the specific terms of their Encore contract. Ask which services are exclusively provided by Encore and which are discretionary. A hotel that is operating transparently with its clients should be willing to share this. One that is not willing to share it is telling you something important about how they view the relationship.

Request an itemized quote that separates the truly exclusive infrastructure items — power, in-building internet, fixed rigging — from every other AV and production line item. That second category should go out to competitive bid. Every time.

Engage an independent production company to quote the non-exclusive scope. Not to antagonize the hotel. Not to create friction for the sake of it. To understand what the actual market value of your event production is, separate from what a captive vendor with a debt load to service has decided it should be.

And when you have venue flexibility, use it deliberately. Not every hotel event needs to be at a Hilton or a Marriott. Corporate campuses, independent conference centers, arts venues, unique hospitality properties — many of these do not carry an Encore exclusive contract. The venue decision is the most powerful procurement decision you make. Exercise it with your eyes open.

A Word on What to Expect Next

Encore going public will not make them more client-friendly. Public market pressure for quarterly revenue growth, combined with a $2.33 billion debt load and an interest bill that already exceeds operating income, will create exactly the opposite pressure. Expect the price increases to continue. Expect the capture rate pressure on hotels to intensify as Encore works to convert that 20% of events that currently escape to outside providers. Expect the commission structure to remain unchanged because it is the mechanism that keeps hotel partners financially committed to the relationship.

What will change is that the numbers are now public. Every commission payment, every signing bonus paid to a hotel to lock in exclusivity, every year of net losses — all of it is on record in a federal filing. Event planners and procurement teams who want to understand why their hotel AV invoice looks the way it does now have a 155-page document that explains it in Encore's own words.