Item - 2024.EP13.4

The Board of Governors of Exhibition Place:

1. Approved the 2025 Operating Budget attached as Appendix A to the report from (October 4, 2024) from the Chief Executive Officer, Exhibition Place.

2. Directed the Chief Executive Officer, Exhibition Place to submit the 2025 Operating Budget to the City Financial Planning Division as part of the 2025 Budget Process.

Toronto is North America’s 4th largest City and is home to Exhibition Place. Our site currently hosts 1,761 events with approximately 5.5 million visitors per year for exhibitions, conventions, events, and entertainment, and we are moving towards becoming a 365-day destination for an impressive range of activities.

Exhibition Place’s vision is to become Canada’s premier destination for conventions, exhibitions, events, and entertainment. We are a unique site in North America, and our goal is to transform Exhibition Place into an intimate space that facilitates unimpeded movement of people.

2025 Budget

On August 1, 2024, the City’s Executive Director, Financial Planning Division provided supplementary instructions for all City Divisions and Agencies for 2025 budget request. City Financial Planning directed ABC's to build their operating and capital budget requests with a focus on fiscal prudence and a review of affordability, sustainability, timing, and prioritization.

As shown in Schedule A below, the 2024 year-end forecasted is a deficit of ($0.300) million which is favourable by $0.500 million to the 2024 approved budget deficit of ($0.800) million based on all booked and anticipated future events for the remainder of this year.

With respects to the Exhibition Place Conference Centre Reserve Fund, the balance at the end of 2024 is forecasted to be $6.033 million. This reserve is a source of funding for both state of good repair, as well as, for the loan repayment of the Beanfield Centre.

Despite all the challenges from bouncing back after the pandemic, our operation is progressing very well, our events revenue, optimistically continues to grow, following same trends as other businesses in the exhibition industry.

The latest findings from the Global Exhibition Barometer research concluded in July 2024 by UFI, the Global Association of the Exhibition Industry, show that the exhibition industry will achieve record revenues globally in 2024, growing beyond post pandemic recovery that was achieved at the end of 2023. In 2024 North America revenue expect to grow by 13 percent and global revenue expect to grow 17 percent from 2023. State of the economy in home market is the most pressing issue for most, followed by global economic development. The latest results also show Globally, there is an overwhelming consensus that AI will affect the industry, with 90 percent of companies stating this. https://www.ufi.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/33rd-Barometer.pdf