Events drive value for partners in 2025

According to the latest Canalys polling data, out of all the events channel partners plan to attend in 2025, 79% of partners are most likely to participate in vendors’ channel partner conferences this year. When we correlate that with another poll from the same time, 53% of partners say vendor-run partner events are either very or extremely impactful for increasing sales opportunities. So, what is happening with events this year, and why do partners continue to believe in the value of in-person vendor events in an increasingly digital and remote world?

Channel partners buy local

Overwhelmingly, channel partners will be attending vendor-run events in 2025, more than any other type of event. No big surprise there, perhaps, but it is not simply because vendors are those that host the most events. Partners see significant sales opportunities in vendor-run events, as they get useful information on product and service updates, and build relationships with vendors that can help generate leads. There is another aspect to vendor-run events, which is networking with other partners, particularly important because the latest Canalys channel survey shows 86% of channel partners are making collaboration with other partners a priority this year.

While vendor-run events are still valuable, partners prefer local events, either regional or in-country, specifically. If partners see events as important to boost sales opportunities, it makes sense they would prefer to have the most localized content and attendees. For vendors, the message is clear: tailor events to local concerns and in local languages. For some vendors in the MSP space this year, including Sophos, Huntress and N-able, local roadshows and small group meetups have already become a priority.

Vendor-run events are valuable for specific reasons

The three main reasons for partners to attend these events are networking, product and service information, and channel insights. Partners place importance on getting localized insights and seeing what their peers are doing, as benchmarking can be hard for most partners to achieve. It is why peer groups and localized meetups, such as Service Leadership or The Tech Tribe, are also important to give SMB partners a better opportunity to steer their businesses in the right direction.

Localization of channel and customer insights will deliver the most value to attendees. So, are big, global vendor-run events a thing of the past? As most of these take place in the US, many partners at these events tend to be US-based, and European and Asian channel partners will often see little value in attending them, unless they are part of larger, global organizations. The cost of attending these events is also largely beyond the reach of smaller MSPs, which must be strategic about which events they attend.

The message is clear: whether you are a vendor, distributor, independent event company or peer group, content and language need to be tailored to local audiences and the priority should be to provide business-building opportunities and clear market intelligence.

To read more about some of the most important events in the channel calendar, click here.