Comdex won’t be sold, owner seeks new shows for LV

Wednesday, March 8, 2000 | 11:15 a.m.

The company that owns Comdex, Las Vegas's largest convention, has abandoned plans to sell the show and instead is spinning it off into a separate publicly traded company.

The new company will focus on more information technology shows, many of them planned in Las Vegas.

New York-based Ziff-Davis Inc. is creating the new holding company, which will include ZD Events Inc. and other Ziff-Davis subsidiaries currently operating Comdex as well as other conventions, trade shows and conferences.

Ziff-Davis is best known as the publisher of two technology trade magazines, PC Magazine and PC Week, which the company plans to sell.

Besides Comdex, a massive computer exposition that draws about 200,000 people to Las Vegas in November, Ziff-Davis presents Networld+Interop, a growing computer networking show that is scheduled to bring 75,000 to the city in May.

Softbank, a Japanese company that is the majority shareholder of Ziff-Davis, will retain a majority ownership in the new company, which has yet to be named.

Tuesday's announcement represents a change in strategy by the owners of Comdex, who said last year they were trying to sell the show. Company representatives said Tuesday the show is no longer on the market and instead it will be the centerpiece of a series of exhibitions, many of which will be staged in Las Vegas.

People familiar with the plan said the company's board of directors believed the company to be worth more than the offers that were received.

Frederic Rosen, the former chairman and chief executive officer of Ticketmaster Group Inc., will become chairman and chief executive officer of the new holding company. Jason Chudnofsky, president and chief executive officer of ZD Events, will become president and chief operating officer of the new company.

Rosen joined Ticketmaster in 1982 and helped build it from a company with less than $1 million in annual sales to one of the world's top computerized ticket sales outlets with more than $2.5 billion in sales annually.

Rosen and Chudnofsky will be in Las Vegas later this month to meet with hotel industry representatives to explain the restructuring and lay the groundwork for future shows.

Chudnofsky said a division of the event-producing company known as ZD Studios works with corporations to present small, customized programs. For example, it worked with IBM Corp. last year for a special event at the MGM Grand hotel-casino.

He said Las Vegas is a perfect venue for companies to do things like introduce new products to large groups of vendors.

"We've held some of these events in small places like Palm Springs, (Calif.)," Chudnofsky said. "They'd much rather come to Las Vegas."

Chudnofsky said conventioneers like the way they are treated by Las Vegas' tourism industry. He said amenities in hotel rooms like Internet access and fax machines encourage executives to travel to the city on business.

Chudnofsky said the company will use the contacts it makes in the Comdex and Networld+Interop shows to schedule special meetings.

"When I started here in 1984, we produced three shows," Chudnofsky said. "Now, we have over 100 different events involving companies from 23 different countries."

Las Vegas can now accommodate more shows because of the development of new convention centers in the city.

"You now have facilities at the Riviera, the MGM Grand, the Venetian and you're building an expansion to the Las Vegas Convention Center," he said. "The date patterns have all changed for Las Vegas. Now, you can accommodate several different events at the same time."

The growth in facilities also enables Las Vegas to host big shows like Comdex, which some companies now avoid because it's too large for them to make an impact. But Chudnofsky denies that attendance at Comdex is decreasing.

"It's all a matter of perception," he said. "We're still getting 200,000 people, there's no downward trend."

The reason it seems to be shrinking, he said, is that now that Las Vegas has enough hotel rooms to accommodate all the conventioneers that come to the show, it isn't as jammed.

"People aren't staying out at Hoover Dam anymore," he said. "They're all able to get nice hotel rooms and suites right on the Strip and they like that. Because some of the lines are shorter doesn't mean the show is getting smaller."

Comdex is, by far, the largest convention hosted by Las Vegas. The show fills most of the convention space available at the Las Vegas Convention Center, the Las Vegas Hilton and the Sands Expo Center. In the last show's appearance, Nov. 15-19, Comdex produced an estimated nongaming economic impact of $240.6 million on the city.