If you run a large B2B event today, you’re not just competing with other shows.
You’re competing with mini events happening at your own show! An ecosystem of private dinners, rooftop drinks, breakfast briefings and invite-only ‘micro-summits’ that orbit your show. Think of them as mini ‘fringe events’ that others are using to piggyback off your show. They might be run by your exhibitors and sponsors or marketers who want to get access to your community by side-stepping your event (costing you revenue).
Marketers love them because:
For you as the organizer, unmanaged side events mean:
Side events aren’t going away. But they can either drain your event or power it. The difference is whether you have a clear side event management strategy.
Below are 7 practical ways to stop side events taking over your event and turn them into a measurable, sponsor-loving revenue stream.
If the internal conversation is “How do we stop these dinners?” or even “Send a cease and desist letter from our lawyers”, you’ve already lost.
Senior attendees genuinely prefer:
So start by reframing side events:
Side events are a premium layer of the event product, not an annoying by-product.
That mindset shift unlocks better questions:
From there, you can design side events as a commercial product line instead of letting them emerge in the shadows.
Side event product ideas:
You haven’t solved the problem yet, but you’ve brought it into the open – where you can price, package and manage it.
You can’t manage what you can’t see. Before you launch new rules or packages, work out what’s already happening.
Simple side event audit checklist:
Two things usually become obvious:
That’s where side event management software comes in.
Once you understand the current landscape, you can start to replace the “shadow show” with official, supported side events.
The trick is to make the official route more attractive than the underground one.
Example side event management packages:
When sponsors can clearly see the upside, like better visibility, more relevant people in the room, improved reporting, they are less tempted to run everything on their own.
Tools, like Grip’s Side Event Management, give you a structured way to run side events through the same platform as your main event.
From the Sponsor / Exhibitor Management Portal, sponsors and exhibitors can:
They get what they want: control over the room and guest experience.
You get what you need: everything happening inside your ecosystem, not scattered across random tools.
On the organizer side, you can:
Instead of discovering side events on LinkedIn two weeks before the show, you manage them like any other part of the programme.
One of the biggest attendee pain points is having three different calendars:
Because a side event management tool is fully integrated into your event tech platform, you can streamline the customer journey for your attendees.
What the attendee sees:
The result:
This is a simple but powerful way to stop side events from feeling like a rival event.
Unofficial side events are usually a data disaster:
With a side event management tool, sponsors and exhibitors can treat their side events like an extension of the show floor.
They can:
For you as the organizer, this unlocks several things:
You’re no longer guessing how side events performed. You’re looking at dashboards, which give you real results.
Technology is the engine but your policy is the steering wheel.
To stop side events from cannibalising your show, you need a few clear, enforceable rules. Keep them simple and position them as protecting everyone’s ROI.
Example side event policy framework:
When combined with a good tool, those rules almost always reduce the number of rogue, off-platform side events.
Use this before your next big show.
Repeat and refine.
Q. What is “side event management” in the context of trade shows?
A. Side event management is the process of planning, approving, scheduling and tracking smaller, satellite experiences around a main event. That includes hosted dinners, roundtables, private demos and invite-only meetups that run alongside your core agenda.
Q. Why do side events hurt event revenue if they’re unmanaged?
A. Because sponsor and exhibitor budgets that could go into stands, sponsorships or official meeting packages are diverted into private, off-platform experiences. You also lose data on who attended, what they engaged with and how it affected pipeline.
Q. How does side event management software help organizers?
A. It gives you a central place where sponsors can submit and manage side events, while you control approvals, scheduling and quality. Integrated tools (like Grip) also keep side events inside the same attendee app, data layer and lead capture flows as your main event.
Q4. Can side events actually increase revenue?
A. Yes. When they’re structured as an official product. You can sell side event packages, bundle them with sponsorship and prove ROI through attendee data and leads. Instead of losing revenue to unofficial dinners, you bring it into your commercial model.
Side events will always exist. They’re often where the real conversations happen, especially for senior attendees.
Your choice as an organizer is simple:
If you’re ready to bring side events under your umbrella, without killing the intimacy that makes them work, it’s worth looking at how Grip handles it.
👉 See how our Side Event Management product, which is part of Grip Manage, helps organizers control, package and track side events as part of one integrated agenda.
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