For programme owners who have run NAB before and want the show-specific knowledge, not the basics.
NAB is the one big Las Vegas show where the audience comes to inspect the equipment, not hear about it. Broadcast engineers, production leads and streaming teams walk the floor to see a signal chain running, and they judge a booth by whether the demo works. This is the planning cycle we run for media technology brands: hall and position, the deadline ladder, what the show bills you directly, power and freight, and the design choices this audience rewards. Live dates and the advance-order deadline for the next edition are on the NAB Show booth rentals page.
NAB maps product categories to halls, and the map changes little from one edition to the next. Space for the following show is selected in priority-point order, largely during and around the current one, so the position decision is usually made with next year’s budget still a draft. Three things to settle before you commit:
Engineers working a capture or post-production problem cover their own hall thoroughly and the others in passing. A 20×20 among the platforms your prospects already run outperforms a larger island in a hall their team crosses on the way to lunch.
The three halls are not interchangeable. Utilities come up through the floor in the West Hall and drop from overhead elsewhere, and parts of the North and Central Halls sit under lower soffits. A design built around a flown sign or a tall LED wall has to be checked against the exact booth position.
NAB is loud. A neighbour running a live audio demo or a large LED wall changes what your booth can do. We ask for the position and the booths around it before drawing, because acoustics and sightlines decide the layout as much as the footprint does.
Hall-by-hall detail is in the Las Vegas Convention Center guide for NAB exhibitors.
On recent editions the Freeman service kit has opened in November, payment for the flat-rate material handling has been due at the end of December, and the graphics and advance-order discount deadlines have landed roughly five to six weeks before opening. After those, show-billed lines move to standard and then floor rates. The exact date for the next edition is in the facts strip on the NAB Show booth rentals page and updates automatically.
Why we freeze at seven weeks rather than five: every NAB demo depends on an electrical and network plan drawn from the final layout. A change after the order is filed re-prices power, internet and rigging at once.
NAB is unusual among large Las Vegas shows in that material handling is not billed by weight. Since 2019 the show has charged a flat fee per square foot of booth space that covers everything you bring in through the docks, regardless of weight or volume. That removes the line that breaks most budgets elsewhere, and moves the risk to power, network and rigging.
| Line | Billed by | What drives it | How to control it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Booth space | The show | Square footage, NAB membership (members pay a lower rate), position | Position chosen by hall and buyer route; membership priced against the space saving |
| Material handling | The show (flat rate) | Net square footage, in tiers. Advance-warehouse storage and third-party shipments are billed separately | Ship direct to show site in your target window; keep third-party deliveries to a minimum |
| Electrical | Venue / official contractor | Circuits, amperage, 24-hour power for servers, distribution under the carpet | One floor plan filed early; consolidated drops; 24-hour power only where hardware needs it |
| Internet | Venue | Hard-line drops and bandwidth for streaming and cloud demos | One wired drop per demo cluster, ordered at advance rates with a floor plan |
| Rigging | Official rigging contractor | Sign or truss weight, motors, hang points, hall position | Confirm rigging at your position before the design leans on a sign |
| Labour | Official contractor / trades | Hours, straight vs overtime, supervision | A pre-built structure that installs in hours; a supervised, planned labour call |
| Cleaning · lead retrieval · late furniture | Show / contractor | Daily vacuuming, scanners, last-minute rentals | Order at advance rates; furniture inside the fixed price |
Put your footprint into the NAB booth cost calculator and it estimates these lines beside a fixed booth price for that size. Every booth we build is published with its Las Vegas price on the Las Vegas booth rentals page.
LED walls, camera rigs, encoders and servers draw more than a typical software booth, and some need power overnight. We size circuits from the equipment list, route them inside the structure, and test everything energised in our facility so nothing is wired for the first time on the show floor.
Streaming, remote production and cloud workflows need wired, dedicated bandwidth. Each demo cluster gets its own drop, planned on the floor plan that goes in with the electrical order, so the two arrive in the right places together.
The flat material-handling rate covers dock-to-booth handling, but it does not cover your carrier missing its target window. Our crated freight runs from our Las Vegas facility across town, timed to the slot rather than routed through a national warehouse.
Labour rules at NAB are set by the show and its official contractor: exhibitors may hand-carry small items, forklifts and motorised equipment stay with the contractor, and anything beyond what the labour rules let your own staff do falls to the official contractor or an approved exhibitor-appointed contractor. Our crews work as your EAC, so the paperwork and the hours are ours.
The NAB audience includes chief engineers, technical directors, post supervisors and the people who sign off on a facility’s next five years of equipment. They read a booth for evidence: is the gear running, can I get close to it, can I talk to the person who built it. Four requirements we design to every year, weighted to the brand:
Camera to switcher to screen, or file to encode to playback. When the whole chain is visible and live, the booth explains itself before anyone speaks.
Image and colour demos die under hall lighting. Shaded or enclosed viewing zones let an engineer judge the picture the way they would in their own facility.
Audio demos need absorption, orientation away from the aisle, or a closed room. A booth that leaks sound into its neighbours also lets their noise in.
The decision is made by a small group asking detailed questions. Space to sit at a screen with a product specialist is the most productive square footage on this floor.
How that looks built, including our IMAX and MainConcept booths, is in the media technology booth design gallery.
In some years NAB at the LVCC, ISC West at the Venetian Expo and RSAC at Moscone fall in the same week. Labour, trucks, rigging crews and hotel rooms in Las Vegas are then split between two major shows at once, and many exhibit houses are committed to one of the three before the season starts.
Running ISC West or RSAC as well? See the ISC West planning guide and the RSAC planning guide.
Tell us your hall, your footprint and what the booth has to demonstrate. You’ll have design concepts and one fixed price back within 24 hours — including what NAB and the LVCC will bill you directly.
Or call us directly — (800) 379-8451
