IBC attendee numbers still strong despite Olympics and economy

The IBC exhibition had recorded 49,808 people through the door at 10.30 this morning, which IBC CEO Michael Crimp said was comparable with last year’s 50,462 and up on 2010.

Crimp said that registrations had fallen a little behind on last year over the Olympics period, but had recovered ahead of the show. “At the end of the day we didn’t seem to be impacted by the Olympics,” he said. “However, it explains why we had a different pattern of registrations.”

Crimp said that record space had been sold to exhibitors this year, which saw the introduction of a new hall, Hall 14, outside the Rai building. This introduced 6,000 sq. metres of additional space. IBC had sold 20,000 sq. metres of space for next year’s show as of last night, he said.

Referring to the introduction of recording artist and Intel creative director will.i.am as a conference speaker at this year’s event, Crimp said that his session had attracted 500 viewers, filling the main conference Forum space. This year’s IBC marked the second year of the Leaders’ Summit, a closed session for media leaders, this year featuring FremantleMedia CEO Gary Carter as an after-dinner speaker.

A ‘Rising Stars’ event for new entrants to the industry and students attracted 120 attendees, while the Innovation Awards had attracted a significant number of nominations from end users as well as vendors, said Crimp.

Phil White, director of technology and events, highlighted Japanese broadcaster NHK’s 8K demonstration and the world premier of a movie – Hugo 3D – screened on a laser projector.

IBC conference chairman Michael Lumley said this year’s show had seen the introduction of new formats, including breakfast briefings. The IBC Awards had given a genuine representation of the breadth of the industry, he said.