Case Study

Sardine · MRC Vegas 2026

The overall sponsor of fraud’s biggest conference built a booth that thinks like an AI agent.

Fresh off a $70 million Series C led by Andreessen Horowitz — with Visa, Experian, Moody’s and FIS participating — Sardine arrived at MRC Vegas 2026 as the conference’s overall sponsor. Pure Exhibits built the flagship to match: a 20 × 20 video wall island at Booth #217 in the ARIA ballroom, under a curved ribbon hanging sign reading “Agentic Platform to Fight Fraud and Abuse,” with LED ticker walls, a sage-green entry arch, and a charging lounge that kept 1,800+ attendees coming back.

Sardine 20x20 video wall island with the curved white and blue Agentic Platform hanging sign at MRC Vegas 2026, Booth 217, ARIA Resort and Casino
20 × 20
Video Wall Island Booth
Booth #217
ARIA Resort & Casino
March 16–19, 2026
MRC Vegas 2026
Overall Sponsor
Main Conference Sponsor

Sponsor-tier visibility, skeptic-proof substance

Overall sponsorship of the Merchant Risk Council’s premier event buys the obligation to look like the room’s most important company — from every aisle, all four days. But MRC’s 1,800+ attendees are payments’ most skeptical evaluators: CISOs, fraud directors, heads of risk and payment operations leaders who judge vendors on platform substance, not staging. Fresh off the $70M Series C and its agentic AI launches, Sardine needed a build that could carry both loads at once.

The design split the frequencies: a curved ribbon sign overhead for the sponsor-scale statement, live LED video and ticker walls at eye level for the platform’s moving data, and human-scale amenities — a sage-green entry arch, a charging lounge — engineered to convert obligation-visits into dwell time and dwell time into demos.

The Sardine island at MRC Vegas 2026 with LED walls and entry arch in the ARIA ballroom

Signal overhead, proof at eye level

The curved ribbon hanging sign over the Sardine island at MRC Vegas 2026
01

The Ribbon

Twenty-plus feet of curved hanging sign — white outer face with the Sardine wordmark and diamond mark in dark navy, vivid blue within — suspended over Booth #217 on black rigging. The most commanding object in the ARIA ballroom, and a shape no rectangular sign could photograph like: the curve was the brand’s signature written in rigging.

02

Walls That Move

A large LED video wall carried the platform’s story in motion, flanked by LED ticker walls streaming like live risk feeds — a booth whose surfaces behaved the way the product does: continuously processing. For an agentic AI platform, static graphics would have been a contradiction.

03

The Sage Arch

A sage-green entry arch broke the fintech blue exactly once — a soft, organic threshold in a hall of hard branding, marking the way in and lowering the temperature of arrival. One material gesture, doing the hospitality work.

The charging lounge and AI agent displays inside the Sardine island at MRC Vegas 2026
04

The Charging Lounge

The amenity that made the booth a habit: a charging lounge where attendees returned between sessions, turning Sardine’s island into the floor’s recurring destination. Every recharge was a second impression — and often the unhurried conversation the first pass never allows.

05

Sponsor Scale, Demo Depth

Overall-sponsor visibility got the ribbon and the walls; the skeptics got live demonstrations of the agentic platform underneath — fraud and abuse detection running as agents, not slides. The build never asked the audience to take staging as substance.

06

Built Before It Shipped

Curved rigging, video walls and ticker arrays were fabricated, fully stood up and photo-approved at our facility before shipping to Las Vegas, on one fixed price — flagship sponsorship with zero show-week improvisation.

Experience the booth

A walkthrough of the Sardine 20 × 20 island at MRC Vegas 2026 — under the ribbon, along the moving walls, into the lounge.

The build at a glance

20 × 20
Video Wall Island — 400 sq ft, Booth #217
$70M
Series C — a16z, with Visa, Experian, Moody’s and FIS
20+ ft
Curved Ribbon Hanging Sign Over the Ballroom
1,800+
Payments & Fraud Professionals at MRC Vegas
MRC Vegas 2026 · ARIA Resort & Casino
March 16–19 — built as the conference’s Overall Sponsor

Obligation, converted

Sponsor booths often stop at being seen. This one converted: the ribbon and moving walls satisfied the visibility mandate, while the arch, the lounge and the live agent demos turned four days of foot traffic into repeat visits and repeat visits into evaluations. The overall sponsor didn’t just anchor the room — it kept refilling it.

For adjacent fraud-and-identity floors, see SpyCloud’s matte-black inline at RSA 2026, and for the same season’s commerce side, Base at Prosper Show 2026.

Sponsoring the show? Build like it.

Top-tier sponsorships deserve architecture that meets the obligation and outlasts it. Pure Exhibits designs and fabricates flagship islands with rigged signage, LED walls and amenity zones that keep attendees returning — pre-built, photo-approved, one fixed price.