Worried? No. I think that the all media industries or industrys that are here to serve attention go through cycles. Cycles where the media or method of access becomes more democritized and open before a consolidation or constriction where the largest groups deploy strategys to monetize that attention.

A great example is the NFL:

From 1973 through 2014, the NFL maintained a blackout policy that stated that a home game cannot be televised in the team’s local market if 85 percent of the tickets are not sold out 72 hours prior to its start time.

It was not until 2014 that this changed nation wide and has been suspended on a year-to-year basis since 2015.

In 1958, when the so called “Greatest game ever played” was blacked out, the NFL’s audience took it into their own hands:

Many fans rented hotel rooms or visited friends in areas of Connecticut or Pennsylvania where signals of TV stations carrying the game were available to watch the game on television, a practice that continued for Giants games through 1972.

This shows that monetizing from the top down only works for so long, before the industry is shaped from the bottom up.

Right now, the top (Event companies, producers, rental comapnies, venues, etc) are coming out of a brutal period of hardship. With the possibility of in-person events back in their pocket, it’s clear why the entire top of the industry is leaning hard into what has previously been the most successful, what they know the best, and what they are able to conrol the most.

I am predicting that the next ~6 months will show a strong constriction of Hyrbid and Virtual events with a favor of in-personal only or lite methods of remote attendace. If our industry follows the trends of every media channel before it, things should swing back to a more even mix of remote attendace option as the demand from the audiance rises.

One more notable point here:

Because the entire industry was forced to shift so quickly to 100% virtual, everyone, on both sides of the camera, was forced into a set of “early adopter products”, wether they are tradtional “early adopters” or not. It has put a bad taste in some users mouths as they are not used this early adopter expereince (read as bugs, poor, UX, etc).

As the platforms and technology in our space continues to mature over the next few months and years, this pain was subside, and those in the majory and late adopter cohorts will return to remote attedance.