With only two years under their belt putting on Possible, the organizers behind the marketing conference and networking gathering have been bought by a major events company.
It’s only the latest in a flurry of dealmaking in the events space, as the FT reports that Cannes Lions owner Ascential is being bought by British publisher Informa for close to 1.2 billion pounds.
Hyve Group, which owns and puts on such events as ShopTalk and FinTech Meetup, has agreed to purchase Beyond Ordinary Events, the organizing body behind Possible, a three day conference that converges around marketing, tech, media and culture.
Hyve Group’s CEO Mark Shashoua declined to identify a purchase price, but sources close to the deal said it’s worth some $40 million with earn out of investors.
Digiday has learned that the MMA, an industry association that devotes itself to proselytizing the future of marketing, will continue to remain a content partner in Possible and the event will remain branded an MMA event. MMA’s CEO Greg Stuart was an original architect of Possible, along with Christian Muche, who years ago started Dmexco, a major media and tech conference in Cologne, Germany. MMA has even had its brand incorporated into the new logo for Possible, which Digiday has gotten hold of.
“We are aligned to continue what we’ve done so far,” said Muche. “So the positioning of Possible to serve the wider and broader marketing world and bring all the decision makers together and have an organic growth in terms of, number of attendees, number of partners, the range of content, etc. is still the case. This won’t change.”
A group of angel investors are said to have been bought out but will remain involved in the planning of future Possible events. Meanwhile, BoE’s board includes chairman Michael Kassan, as well as Stuart and Muche, former GM CMO Deb Wahl and former Dunkin CMO John Costello.
Kassan, who is BoE’s chairman, will continue to serve in that capacity, while BoE CEO Muche becomes president of the new company. Stuart said MMA will continue to power much of the event’s content, and noted this “remains an MMA event, we have a role to play to bring the CMOS to the table on this — that’s what we do. And bring proprietary content.”
Year two of Possible took place in Miami in mid-April, and according to Kassan, talks with Hyve as well as other interested buyers were already taking place then. Possible’s attendance in April hit 3,600, which was 1,000 more than year one, and was largely considered by the industry to have built successfully on the first year (which had the good fortune at the time of then-new Twitter/X owner Elon Musk, whose participation attracted considerable interest).
All the parties said there are no current plans to change anything about the event, but long-term aims include finding international destinations and iterations of the conference and, from Hyve’s POV, add meeting elements to it that Hyve has applied to its other conferences.
“Hyve has a global footprint and and a lot of experience with other markets, and this is part of our vision as well,” said Muche. “Maybe we can come to this point even faster now, together with them.”
“We have a very strong centralized best practice that we help support those particular ecosystem events, in particular the meetings program that we do,” said Shashoua, who said thousands of meetings are facilitated on site at other Hyve events. “We think that’s very much the future of these of events as a whole. We have to create the right environment, and that means the right speakers, the right engagement for that ecosystem. But then it’s also the meetings to ensure that the right people meet the right people, and that’s a very big part of it.”
Looking through the prism of MMA’s own events, Stuart said Hyve was a natural choice to take Possible to the next level, and that the MMA board unanimously approved the deal. “Having talked to every events company out there in the process of setting up possible originally, my experience is that [Hyve] are probably the most innovative event company I have seen,” said Stuart, who also said MMA plans to build a CMO Academy within Possible. “They have a real vision about what the future looks like around customer experience. And it’s technology based, it’s powerful, and it’s absolutely in line of where we were always going. They also have a market dominant strategy, they believe that there needs to be one event that owns a sector.”
Although Possible still needs to keep establishing its bona fides, Shashoua said it fits Hyve’s bill as the dominant event in marketing — his point being that Cannes Lions, CES, SXSW and even Advertising Week serve more than just marketing — where Possible is the purest event in the field.
“I had the good fortune of getting to know [Hyve execs] in the trenches, and I’ve been extremely impressed,” said Kassan. Shashoua’s “family has been in the event business for their entire lives. He’s an events guy, through and through.”
Year three for Possible in 2025 has already been firmed up, taking place once again at the Fontainebleau in South Beach April 28-30.
As far as Ascential and Informa’s massive deal, which one source puts close to 17 times EBITDA, Kassan has long been known to want to own Cannes Lions (in some ways he already does, without spending the money). When asked about that deal, he merely credited Ascential for “commanding a princely sum” for it.
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