Skip to main content

CES 2016 drew more than 170,000 attendees for tech’s biggest trade show

CES 2016 drew more than 170,000 attendees.
Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

The Consumer Electronics Show drew more than 170,000 people to Las Vegas this week to view more than 2.47 million square feet of exhibits.

The square footage for the 3,800-plus exhibitors was a record breaker, according to the Consumer Technology Association (formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Association). The show drew to a close today. More than 50,000 of the attendees were from outside the U.S. More than 6,000 media attended. The show is the biggest tech event in North America.

Back in October, CTA CEO Gary Shapiro said the group was targeting about 150,000 attendees, but it didn’t really have a good way of forecasting numbers. He said the group was trying to curate the audience to keep the quality high.

It remains to be seen whether the number of people in attendance broke a record, too. A year ago, audited numbers showed there were 176,676 attendees. Of those, 48,833 came from outside the U.S. There were 3,631 exhibitors, 2.23 million square feet of space, 6,952 media and analyst attendees, and 7.51 billion potential Twitter impressions.


June 5th: The AI Audit in NYC

Join us next week in NYC to engage with top executive leaders, delving into strategies for auditing AI models to ensure fairness, optimal performance, and ethical compliance across diverse organizations. Secure your attendance for this exclusive invite-only event.


I walked 73,376 steps, or 18,344 per day, and I’m still tired from the show.