Case Study
Sardine
When the overall sponsor of payments’ biggest fraud conference builds a booth that thinks like an AI agent — Sardine’s 20×20 video wall island at MRC Vegas 2026 turned agentic AI fraud detection into a physical brand experience with a curved hanging sign, LED ticker walls, sage-green entry arch, and a charging lounge that kept 1,800+ attendees coming back
Pure Exhibits designed and built Sardine’s custom 20×20 ft video wall island booth at MRC Vegas 2026 — Booth #217 at the ARIA Resort & Casino, Las Vegas, March 16–19, 2026 — creating a high-impact exhibit anchored by a dramatic curved white-and-blue hanging sign reading “Agentic Platform to Fight Fraud and Abuse,” a large LED video wall displaying dynamic content, a horizontal LED ticker banner scrolling “Sardine AI agents can help” and “Problems you couldn’t solve, now solvable,” a distinctive sage-green curved entry archway with sparkling mosaic accents, branded navy-blue wall panels with yellow-and-black chevron warning-stripe accents, a curved white reception counter with teal LED underglow, warm wood slat accent walls with integrated LED strip lighting, light wood laminate flooring, live product demo monitors, a dedicated Charging Lounge for attendees, and an open island layout with white bar stools and poseur tables — all unified by Sardine’s royal-blue, white, and yellow brand palette. As MRC Vegas 2026’s overall sponsor, Sardine’s booth delivered its agentic AI fraud prevention platform story to 1,800+ payments and fraud prevention professionals.
The Challenge
Making an AI Platform Tangible at Fraud Prevention’s Premier Conference
Sardine arrived at MRC Vegas 2026 as the conference’s overall sponsor — the top-tier investment in the Merchant Risk Council’s premier annual event for payments and fraud prevention professionals. The company had recently raised $70 million in Series C funding (led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Visa, Experian, Moody’s, and FIS), launched a suite of AI agents designed to automate fraud investigation and compliance workflows, and positioned itself as the industry’s leading agentic AI fraud platform — trusted by 300+ enterprise customers across banking, fintech, eCommerce, and online marketplaces in 70+ countries. The challenge was both conceptual and spatial: how do you make an AI-powered fraud detection platform — something that operates invisibly in real-time, analyzing device intelligence, behavior biometrics, and machine learning signals — feel tangible, compelling, and worth stopping for in a 20×20 ft exhibit space at a 1,800-person conference where every attendee is a fraud or payments professional who has already seen every vendor pitch?
The brief called for a booth that could serve Sardine’s overall-sponsor visibility requirements (maximum visual impact from every aisle approach) while functioning as a live demonstration and meeting environment. MRC Vegas draws a deeply technical, skeptical audience — CISOs, fraud directors, heads of risk, and payment operations leaders who evaluate vendors on platform depth, not booth graphics. Pure Exhibits had previously designed exhibits for fraud and financial services conferences, including SpyCloud’s MRC Las Vegas booth and SpyCloud’s Black Hat 2025 island — but Sardine’s brief demanded something different: a booth that could embody the concept of “agentic AI” in physical form, making an invisible technology feel immediate and powerful.
“Agentic Platform to Fight Fraud and Abuse.”
— Sardine Brand Platform
The Creative Journey
Blue, Bold, and Built for Agents
The Curved Hanging Sign
The single most commanding element in the ARIA ballroom — visible from every aisle on the show floor — was Sardine’s curved ribbon-shaped hanging sign, approximately 20+ feet wide, suspended from the ceiling via black rigging cables. The sign featured a pure white outer face with the Sardine wordmark and angular diamond logo in bold dark navy, while the vivid royal-blue underside carried the conference-defining statement: “Agentic Platform to Fight Fraud and Abuse.” Yellow-and-black diagonal chevron warning-stripe accents capped both terminal ends of the ribbon — a visual reference to caution tape and alert signals that communicated urgency and threat detection without a single line of copy. The sign’s curved form echoed the dynamism of Sardine’s AI agents in motion — sweeping, continuous, always scanning. In a hotel ballroom convention setting where most overhead signage is rectangular and static, the curved ribbon was an architectural statement that positioned Sardine as the conference’s dominant visual presence before attendees even reached the booth floor.
Video Wall & LED Tickers
The right zone of the booth was dominated by a large freestanding LED video wall — approximately 8–10 feet tall and 10–12 feet wide — displaying dynamic content on a purple-blue gradient background with large-format messaging like “Finds patterns in your data” in clean white typography. This wasn’t a static panel; it was a living, breathing visual surface that cycled through platform capabilities, data visualizations, and brand messaging. Complementing the video wall, a horizontal LED ticker banner wrapped the tower section, continuously scrolling messages like “Sardine AI agents can help,” “Problems you couldn’t solve, now solvable,” and “Agentic platform to fight fraud and abuse” in vivid white text against electric blue with sparkling pixel/diamond mosaic animations. The combination created a booth that felt alive with data — exactly the right metaphor for a platform that processes fraud signals in real time.
The Sage-Green Archway
The booth’s interior entrance was framed by a large curved archway — approximately 12–14 feet tall and 12–15 feet wide — finished in a fresh sage-green/lime-white color that created an unexpected contrast against the predominantly blue-and-white palette. This green arch was a deliberate design choice: in a convention hall saturated with blue, black, and white fintech branding, the sage-green entry moment was the visual surprise that made attendees pause, look, and step inside. Above the archway, a curved horizontal canopy band carried the headline “Sardine AI agents can help” in bold white text on dark navy, flanked by sparkling dot/diamond mosaic patterns in yellow and teal. The smooth rounded columns and top beam gave the entrance an almost portal-like quality — a physical threshold between the crowded show floor and Sardine’s focused, technology-forward interior. A tropical plant at the column base added organic warmth.
Warm Wood & Demo Interior
Inside the archway, the booth revealed a carefully designed interior that balanced technology demonstration with material warmth. Vertical wooden slat walls with built-in warm LED strip lighting created a glowing natural backdrop that softened the digital intensity of the surrounding screens. Two flat-panel monitors — a larger ~50-inch screen and a smaller screen — were mounted inside showing live Sardine platform demonstrations, including fraud investigation interfaces, device intelligence dashboards, and AI agent workflow screens. Light honey-toned wood-grain LVT plank flooring unified the interior, clearly demarcating Sardine’s space from the surrounding dark gray convention carpet. Content panels displayed the five pillars of the unified platform: device intelligence, behavior biometrics, flexible rulesets, real-time risk scoring, and workflows & decisioning. A smartphone graphic with a heat-map visualization illustrated how Sardine detects bot-driven carding attacks by combining device and behavior signals — making abstract AI technology feel concrete and immediate.
Charging Lounge
One of the booth’s smartest engagement strategies was the dedicated Charging Lounge — a clearly branded amenity zone with a bright teal/cyan horizontal band reading “CHARGING LOUNGE” in white. At a four-day conference where attendees are constantly on their phones scheduling meetings, scanning badges, and checking session schedules, offering device charging wasn’t just hospitality — it was a lead-generation strategy. Attendees who sat down to charge inevitably started conversations with the Sardine team, watched the nearby demo screens, and absorbed the platform messaging on the surrounding panels. The Charging Lounge turned passive dwell time into active engagement time, creating natural interaction moments that didn’t feel like sales pitches. Combined with the open layout and comfortable bar-height seating, it made the booth a destination that attendees returned to throughout the conference — not just a one-time drive-by.
Overall Sponsor Positioning
As MRC Vegas 2026’s overall sponsor — the single highest-tier sponsorship at the conference — Sardine’s booth needed to match the investment with commanding visual presence. The ARIA Resort & Casino’s ballroom convention setting (with its coffered ceilings, warm amber chandeliers, and decorative gold ceiling sculptures) created a dramatically different environment from the industrial convention halls of CES or RSA. The booth design leveraged this: the curved hanging sign was proportioned to dominate the lower ceiling heights of a ballroom, while the navy-blue wall panels with their subtle pixel-dot texture and yellow-black chevron accents created bold brand billboards visible from every approach. The booth was positioned in the heart of the exhibit floor, surrounded by major payment and financial services brands including Mastercard, Southwest Airlines, and others. Chief Fraud Strategist Matt Vega’s conference session — “Building an AI Fraud Attack in 20 Minutes” — drove additional booth traffic as attendees sought live demonstrations of the techniques discussed on stage.
The ARIA ballroom view — Sardine’s curved hanging sign dominates the ceiling with “Agentic Platform to Fight Fraud and Abuse” messaging, while the navy-blue booth panels, yellow-black chevron accents, and teal-lit reception counter create an unmistakable brand presence among MRC Vegas 2026’s major financial services exhibitors including Mastercard, Southwest Airlines, and others.
The Message
Agentic Platform to Fight Fraud and Abuse
“Problems you couldn’t solve, now solvable.” — the LED ticker promise that defined Sardine’s presence as MRC Vegas 2026’s overall sponsor.
Enterprise customers across 70+ countries trusting Sardine’s AI risk platform
Sardine’s booth messaging operated on multiple timescales simultaneously. The overhead hanging sign delivered the brand platform (“Agentic Platform to Fight Fraud and Abuse”) to anyone within visual range. The LED ticker created urgency and curiosity with rotating messages — “Sardine AI agents can help,” “Problems you couldn’t solve, now solvable,” “Finds patterns in your data” — that rewarded repeated attention with new content. The video wall delivered deeper platform narratives for attendees who stopped to watch. And the interior content panels provided the technical depth that MRC’s fraud-professional audience demanded: device intelligence, behavior biometrics, flexible rulesets, real-time risk scoring, and workflows & decisioning. Matt Vega’s session — “Building an AI Fraud Attack in 20 Minutes” — created a bridge between stage content and booth demonstrations, driving post-session traffic directly to the Sardine team for live platform walkthroughs.
“Agentic Platform to Fight Fraud and Abuse”
“Sardine AI agents can help”
“Problems you couldn’t solve, now solvable”
“Finds patterns in your data”
“All delivered in one unified platform: Device intelligence, Behavior biometrics, Flexible rulesets, Real-time risk scoring, Workflows & decisioning”
Gallery
The Booth in Detail
Front-on hero shot — the complete 20×20 ft island with hanging sign, LED ticker, video wall, and blue reception desk
Wide-angle view — the hanging sign dominates the ARIA ballroom with Mastercard neighbor visible
Full reveal — LED video wall, ticker banner, and wood slat demo area in perfect alignment
Through the arch — sage-green entry portal framing the wood-clad demo interior
Dramatic low angle — the “Agentic Platform to Fight Fraud and Abuse” hanging sign in full glory
Corner angle — the navy billboard, Charging Lounge signage, and booth interior from outside
Booth Walkthrough
Experience the Booth
A full walkthrough of the Sardine 20×20 ft custom video wall island booth at MRC Vegas 2026 — showcasing the dramatic curved white-and-blue hanging sign, the LED video wall, the horizontal LED ticker banner, the sage-green curved entry archway, the warm wood slat interior with live product demos, the dedicated Charging Lounge, the curved blue reception counter with teal LED underglow, the navy-blue brand panels with yellow-black chevron accents, and the full scope of Sardine’s overall sponsor presence at Booth #217 in the ARIA Resort & Casino.
Impact & Results
By the Numbers
From Invisible AI to Visible Authority. An Overall Sponsor’s Argument for Agentic Fraud Prevention.
MRC Vegas 2026 brought 1,800+ payments and fraud prevention professionals to the ARIA Resort & Casino for four days of keynotes, workshops, and exhibit floor engagement — the Merchant Risk Council’s premier annual gathering where fraud directors, CISOs, heads of risk, and payment operations leaders evaluate the vendors and platforms that will protect their organizations for the year ahead. For Sardine — the AI risk platform trusted by 300+ enterprises in 70+ countries, backed by $70 million in Series C funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Visa, Experian, Moody’s, and FIS — the overall sponsor investment at MRC Vegas demanded a booth that could match the visibility of the top-tier sponsorship with the technical substance that a fraud-professional audience expects.
The design strategy was built on a single insight: agentic AI is inherently dynamic, and the booth needed to feel dynamic too. Where most exhibit designs rely on static panels and printed graphics, Sardine’s booth was designed around motion and change — the curved hanging sign sweeping overhead, the LED video wall cycling through platform narratives, the ticker banner scrolling real-time messaging, the monitors running live product demos. Nothing in the booth was still. This wasn’t decorative animation; it was a physical metaphor for how Sardine’s AI agents operate — continuously scanning, analyzing, and responding to fraud signals in real time. The sage-green archway provided the narrative transition from the bustling show floor to the focused interior, while the wood slat walls, warm LED lighting, and light wood flooring created an environment that felt premium and intentional rather than generic and corporate. Pure Exhibits had explored similar approaches to making invisible technology feel tangible in SpyCloud’s MRC Las Vegas booth, SpyCloud’s Black Hat 2025 island, and Teramind’s 30×60 Diamond Sponsor island at RSA 2025.
The results validated every design decision. The Charging Lounge turned passive dwell time into pipeline conversations. The LED ticker’s rotating messages — “Sardine AI agents can help,” “Problems you couldn’t solve, now solvable” — created repeat engagement as attendees passed by multiple times throughout the conference. Matt Vega’s session on “Building an AI Fraud Attack in 20 Minutes” drove post-talk traffic directly to the booth for live demonstrations of fraud investigation workflows, AI agent conversations, and real-time risk scoring. The live demos showcased Sardine’s core capabilities — detecting fraud pre-authorization, uncovering fraud rings in real time, and using AI agents to automate fraud monitoring and disputes — giving MRC’s technical audience the depth they needed to move from interest to evaluation. For a company that had just raised $70 million to make fraud and compliance teams more productive through agentic AI, the MRC Vegas 2026 booth made that abstract promise concrete: Sardine’s AI agents don’t just run in the background — they show up, they engage, and they solve problems that yesterday’s tools couldn’t touch.
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