CES Show is moving?
 

Just got back from a cruise, so I was a little out of the loop... checked the first 5 or 6 pages here, but didn't see anything about it.

Is the CES show moving away from the Venetian this January? Is AEE still there?

The CES show will not fit in the Venetian by itself, and never has. It always takes up the Las Vegas Convention Center (which has 2 million square feet of exhibit space) and usually 3 or 4 other nearby hotels.

Thats how big it is.

ces moved outta the sands expo and taking up the lvcc and other spots. wanted to get away from the sands and adult stuff. gonna be harder to get a good attendance for the AEE stuff

I have exhibited at AEE for the past 5 yrs now and each year it as gotten smaller and smaller. With CES pulling out I think this could be the last year for AEE.

Last year the show was down 25% in exhibitors and had to be down 33% in attendance. Now the show is back to one floor and you have to figure without the CES cross over people, attendance will be down another 25% from last years lows.

In their ariticle "Tough times in the porn industry", the LA times reported similar numbers this morning: "There are plenty of other signs of the porn industry's pain. Attendance at the Adult Entertainment Expo, an annual trade show in Las Vegas that's open some days to the public, was down 20% this year. Pay-per-view programming, a key revenue source for the industry, has fallen about 50% from its peak three or four years ago, according to a person familiar with the cable and satellite TV business."

For once the LA Times writes an article that is spot on about the industry. Porn will still be produced in LA but it will be a much different business. I can see it going back to the more family oriented business model that it was in the late 70s and 80s. Less studios, less performers, less production but overall more profitable.

As for the AEE, I just cant see the bigger companies continuing to shell out $50,000 + to have a booth. Without the big studios the show will either wither away or if AEE is smart will end quickly before it becomes nothing but teeth whitening and tattoo parlor booths.

I haven't attended the AEE in a few years but at one point I was a regular with my old company for like 10 years in a row. Back then it was a nightmare when the two shows used the same pass, since the adult booths were flooded with CES people and you couldn't even get past them to talk business. A lot of the novelty companies would set up hospitality suites with all the new product so you could go up and place orders without the mob in the way.

I think it was like 2003 that they made the Expo industry people only until 1 PM, and then opened it up to anyone that bought a fan pass after that, and it definitely made it a lot better. I think the first year they did that the line for the people that held the fan passes stretched all the way through that long ass hallway in the Sands. I think 2005 was the last AEE I attended, and even then you started to see less and less booths and fewer people. It really will be a shame if the AEE dies, but the adult bookstores, that really were their main focus, have been dying for a long while now...

That's what I was afraid of... just how much of the traffic was from CES. I noticed a huge drop in traffic this year, and didn't know how much CES leaving would affect this coming year.

From what I gathered in conversations around Florida Internext. A lot of the bigger online porn studios are starting to migrate their production operations to Florida. Like Brazzzers.

:2 cents:

Thats not the smartest idea for the big companies. Its still not legal to shoot in Florida (Ray Guhn) and there are problems with enforcing contracts for sex in a state like Florida. They may be okay from a stand point of getting busted from a law enforcement perspective but on a civil matter - there's little case law to help a studio in Florida.