PLASA
Industry Overview
PLASA operates across the live events, entertainment and installation industries representing the leading specialists in professional audio, AV, lighting, staging and related technologies.
It's not an easy task to delineate the scope and scale of the sector, but it embraces everything from theatre, live music, film/TV and special events to night venues, architectural installations and construction projects.
As a consequence this is a highly diverse sector, the connecting link coming from the creative use of the technologies, which are finding new audiences and new applications all the time, thereby creating an ever broader footprint for the sector.
The array of businesses operating in the industry is equally diverse and ranges from major corporates to SMEs to individual specialists, though typically the majority of businesses are SMEs employing between 10 and 50 people. Many of these operate somewhere within the supply chain offering expertise and services associated with the technologies and project base. Whilst this is not a sector heavily biased towards manufacturing, the manufacturers in the sector are some of the most talented in the world, maximising developments in technology to produce highly innovative and ground-breaking products.
Since we operate across the creative and entertainment fields, the sector has a large number of freelancers compared to other industries, who tend to specialise in the design, creative, engineering and production fields.
PLASA's experience indicates that generally the sector has performed well in the last 18 months compared with other industries, though reductions in spending - on corporate events and construction/refurbishment projects in particular - have impacted throughout the industry. A small number of companies, particularly those with a diverse product range, a strong advance order book or a high ratio of export revenue, have bucked the trend, trading on solid reputations and currency advantages.
Mergers and acquisitions are on the increase across the industry, particularly amongst the larger players seeking to leverage the advantages of a portfolio of brands.
In 2011, PLASA intends to relaunch its research exercise on the industry to provide its Members with qualitative data on the sector.