Do you know the name COMDEX? Have you heard of the show?
The Computer Dealers’ Exhibition (COMDEX) delivered the future to millions of people. As a brand, it became the largest tradeshow in the world, with 185 separate tech events between 1979 and 2006. The shows appeared in 24 countries on six continents, and in eight different U.S. cities. As an individual show, it was the largest in North America and second in size worldwide only to the German computer expo, Centrum fur Buroautomation, Informationstechnologie und Telekommunication (CeBIT). Fall COMDEX dominated Las Vegas for nearly two decades with an invading horde of geeks, buyers, distributors, manufacturers, workers, press, and tire-kickers.
How large was one Las Vegas show? Imagine an event with 24 million pounds of freight, a million square feet of carpet, and 250 miles of electrical cable—all needing to be handled and installed. Think about the origin and logistics of coordinating thousands of trailers full of freight. Add to that mix 225,000 attendees, including more members of the press than worked the Super Bowl. During Fall COMDEX show days, it was challenging to move around the town, and at times nearly impossible to find an unoccupied cab, pay phone, or a table in a restaurant.
At its peak in 1998, the show attracted 2,337 exhibitors, covered 1,475,000 net square feet of exhibit space, and displayed more than 10,000 products. Attendees arrived from 145 different countries, and almost 40 percent of the exhibitors were from overseas. The show filled the convention center to the max, and spilled people and exhibits into other venues, hotels, and parking lots. COMDEX strained airport and hotel capacity. It tested the town with crowd control and traffic congestion.
What was the show like? Long lines of people waited for cabs and shuttle buses. Sometimes patiently, sometimes not so patiently. They waited in traffic, light after traffic light, block after block. They waited herded together in the lobby of the convention center—tens of thousands of bodies pressed one against the other, anxiously waiting for the doors to open. And once allowed inside, what would they see and experience?
Products, people, and hype. Bells and whistles. Banners and signs. Booths and exhibits. Islands and in-lines. Keynotes and seminars. Dazzling displays of stunning brand architecture. Towering double-deckers with million-dollar audio-visual presentations. More products. More people. Plus, jugglers, magicians, mimes, porn stars, contests, games, and giveaways—software, hardware, tickets, even cars were offered as gifts. Titans wined and dined. Businesses entertained at luncheons, post-show receptions and nightly parties. Lots of parties all over town and all hours of the night. But it wasn’t the parties that drove the growth. It was the business, the potential sales, and the networking.
New, new, and new was the mantra on the show floor. Computer companies, storage companies, software and hardware giants, startups and others filled the halls. Exhibiting companies, some known, some unknown at the time, populated the show floor; they included: 3Com, Acer, AMD, Apple, AT&T, Autodesk, Borland, Brother, Byte, CAI, Canon, Casio, Cisco, Compaq, Digital, Hewlett Packard, Hitachi, IBM, Intel, LaserPort, Lotus, Microsoft, NEC, Oracle, Packard Bell, Panasonic, Phillips, Qualcomm, Ricoh, Samsung, Sharp, Siemens, Sony, Sybase, Toshiba, Wang, WordPerfect, WorldCom, Xerox, and Ziff-Davis. These 40 companies represented a small fraction of the often 2,000-plus exhibitors showcasing stunning exhibits and revolutionary products.
What was the show’s impact? Imagine having an invading army the size of Reno, Nevada suddenly appear overnight. That was COMDEX. Attendance surpassed 200,000 customers for five consecutive years, and that number was greater than the total population at the time of Reno. The show created logistical challenges, but it also generated benefits. New hotels and venues materialized, and Vegas emerged as a premiere convention destination. The Las Vegas Sun reported the economic impact of Fall COMDEX 2000 to be $359 million.
It was big business. It created opportunities for hundreds of startups. One successful example: Consider Compaq’s meteoric rise from a portable Personal Computer developer in Texas to a one billion dollar company just five years after first exhibiting at the show; Compaq would later be acquired by Hewlett Packard for $24.2 billion in 2002. The show was a labor bonanza, creating thousands of jobs and supporting many thousands more. Companies flew in support and labor personnel from out of town. Labor shortages and time constraints necessitated overtime hours. Some crews worked around the clock with individuals grossing two even four times a normal week’s wages.
COMDEX powered the Personal Computer revolution. It changed the landscape of Las Vegas with new hotels and new convention centers. It changed the tradeshow industry by demonstrating that mega-shows were possible. And like any successful tradeshow, it made money.
Origin and Growth. The Computer Dealers Exposition, as it was known in its first year, opened in a ballroom at the Las Vegas MGM Grand in 1979. It had 167 exhibitors and 3,904 attendees. At the time, the National Computer Conference (NCC) was the largest computer show in the country. NCC focused on large main frame computers and consigned personal computers to the garage level of the Disneyland Hotel. COMDEX’ focus in the beginning was on manufacturers, dealers, retailers and developers. For the first two years, the show was only in Las Vegas with Digital Equipment Corporation being one of the first major exhibitors. In year three, COMDEX appeared in New York City in the spring and in Las Vegas in the fall. IBM and Apple exhibited and displayed PCs. In 1982, COMDEX held three shows: Las Vegas, Amsterdam and Atlantic City. Microsoft exhibited in Atlantic City in a 10-by-20 foot booth space. In four short years, this new tech event became the second largest tradeshow in the U.S.—Chicago’s Housewares was the largest and it had been around for 72 years.
The show grew rapidly and spread internationally, but it was a controlled growth, at least for the first 16 years. There were five shows in 1994, and six in 1995—located in Vancouver, Rio de Janerio, Atlanta, Toronto, Sao Paulo, and Las Vegas. As COMDEX steadily increased in size and number, it seemed as if nothing could stop it.
In 1995, Sheldon Adelson and the Interface Group sold the show to SoftBank Corp for $865 million (the equivalent of $1.8 billion today). SoftBank, a Japanese conglomerate, expanded the show schedule to eleven cities in 1996, then doubled that number in 1998—22 separate shows worldwide in a single year! There were 21 shows in 2000. As the number of shows increased, so did the cost of exhibiting. In 2000, exhibit space in Vegas cost $55 per square foot (equivalent to $103 today, or $10,300 for a 100 square-foot space on the show floor). Microsoft spent about $12 million that year (the equivalent of $22.5 million today). That was only one of several shows it attended worldwide. Key 3 Media (a Ziff Davis spinoff) purchased the show from SoftBank in 2001.
Fall COMDEX weathered torrential rainstorms, outlasted taxi strikes, endured labor and room shortages, and overcame the crushing onslaught of visitors. But it couldn’t survive the dual sales to SoftBank, and Key 3 Media.
The end of an era. Attendance dropped from 211,000 in year 2000, to 150,000 after the dot-com bomb exploded in 2001, to 40,000 attendees in 2003. On June 24,2004, the New York Times Technology section headline read: “Comdex, the Computer Show, Cancelled for Lack of Interest.” There was no Fall COMDEX in Vegas in 2004, although there were five shows outside the U.S. that year. The final live COMDEX occurred in Greece in 2005.
There are many reasons why the show declined, and those that were observant could see the handwriting on the wall years earlier. The market steadily shifted: from main frames, to pcs, to aftermarket add-ons, to workstations, and onto laptops. At the same time, there was a change in targeted attendees: from dealers to retail stores to corporate buyers to the public. For a while, the show adapted. Then it didn’t. The show lost its way; it became bloated, horizontal, unfocussed, and oversaturated.
IBM, Dell, Intel, and AMD all declined to exhibit at the show in 1998. The shows were becoming increasingly expensive and there were too many around the world. Apple and Microsoft stopped exhibiting in 2000. Then came the dot-com bust and 9/11—but the financial crisis didn’t kill all tech shows CES flourished after 2001 and continues strong today. CeBIT exceeded 500,000 attendees each year through 2004, and its last show, with 120,000 attendees, was in 2018.
Tradeshows work. They work very well. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy or that success is guaranteed. Success requires hard work. constant vigilance, and repeated course corrections. COMDEX worked until it didn’t. In the late nineties, show management appeared to be more concerned with appeasing shareholders than satisfying stakeholders. Then the tech bubble burst, followed by 9/11. It was a triple storm and there was no recovery for this specific show.
This story originally appeared in the Q1 2026 issue of Exhibit City News, p. 76. For original layout, visit https://issuu.com/exhibitcitynews/docs/exhibit_city_news_-_jan_feb_mar_2026/76.
