Senior leaders already believe in corporate events. What planners still can’t give them is the revenue number finance wants — and new benchmarking data shows where the gap is widest, and what closes it.

Ask corporate event leaders whether their executives value events, and most will say yes. Ask whether budgets get approved easily, and the answer flips.

That disconnect sits at the heart of the ICEN Annual Benchmarking Report 2026/2027, supported by Cvent, which surveyed 115 corporate event professionals between July and September. Seventy-nine percent rate their senior stakeholders’ belief in events at 4 or 5 out of 5. Only 13% say budgets are easy to approve; 72% call approval mixed.

The objection planners hear most often is blunt: “We can’t measure the ROI,” cited by 45%, ahead of timing, cost-cutting and cost per head. ICEN’s framing is that events don’t have a value problem. They have a currency problem: no agreed unit of account.

The Biggest Challenges

The number everyone wants is the one nobody has. Of five business outcomes respondents rated, pipeline or revenue contribution is the one they evidence least clearly: just 37% rate their evidence 4 or 5, while 35% rate it 1 or 2. Yet 54% say proof that events drive measurable pipeline is the single piece of data that would most help them justify their program. The runner-up, the cost of not holding events, trails at 19%. Little wonder 82% call proving ROI a significant challenge for the year ahead, second only to budget pressure (85%).

Measurement still stops at the door. Eighty-three percent track registrations or attendance and 81% track post-event satisfaction. Only 34% attribute revenue, up from 30% in 2025 on differently worded options. Attendance measures reach, not results — and the report notes the industry has spent a decade reporting it as though it were the latter.

Scale makes it harder. Teams running 30 or fewer events a year find budgets easy to approve 22% of the time. For teams running 60 or more, that falls to 4%, while stakeholder belief holds level. With 28% of respondents now running more than 100 events a year, a story told event by event no longer holds up.

The data doesn’t connect. Teams that move event data into their CRM by manual export and import give their pipeline evidence an average rating of 2.48 out of 5, the lowest of any group; 58% of them rate it 1 or 2. More than half of respondents (56%) name data integration between event tech and CRM as a significant challenge.

Skills are outrunning training. Respondents rank AI tool literacy and data analysis and ROI reporting as the top two skills their role now demands. But only 19% have a structured training budget and program, and just 13% have AI widely embedded in their event processes.

What’s Working

Write the scoring model down. Teams with a documented engagement scoring model rate their pipeline evidence 3.71 out of 5, against 2.82 for those without one. Informal tracking (2.94) barely beats no model at all. ICEN suggests starting simple — attendance, session engagement and follow-up meetings — and agreeing thresholds with sales.

Connect data before buying analytics. Partially integrated teams score 3.28 on pipeline evidence, well above manual teams. Automating the flow into the CRM comes first.

Agree to the measures up front. With half of event teams sitting in marketing, the report urges planners to settle with marketing and finance which figures will judge the program before the budget request. Ownership alone isn’t the fix: easy approval sits at 13% to 16% regardless of who owns ROI.

Start where the data is closest. Seventy-eight percent put at least half their budget into owned events, where teams collect the data themselves. Retention and expansion (evidenced clearly by 43%) also offer a nearer commercial route than new pipeline.

Point AI at measurement, such as reconciling attendee lists with CRM records.

ICEN’s broader argument is for a standard, not a tool. If writing one model down inside one company improves the evidence, a shared model across the industry could change what finance will accept.

Photo courtesy of Image by gpointstudio on Magnific