NEW YORK – Private equity funds managed by Apollo Global Management have agreed to acquire trade-show impresario Emerald Holding Inc. in a $1.5-billion all-cash deal, representing a 42.1-percent premium over Emerald’s share price as of December 15, 2025. The deal will take publicly traded Emerald — parent company of cannabis trade show MJBizCon and news platform mjbizdaily.com — private.
In a separate, concurrent transaction, Apollo also will acquire publisher and trade show producer Questex LLC. Terms of that deal were not disclosed.
A major consolidation play
Key Insights: The Apollo-Emerald Acquisition
- The transaction: Apollo Global Management is acquiring Emerald Holding Inc. in a $1.5-billion all-cash deal.
- Going private: The deal merges Emerald with Questex LLC, taking the company off the NYSE to create a massive B2B experiential media platform.
- The MJBiz impact: As an Emerald asset, MJBizCon will move under Apollo’s institutional umbrella.
- Consolidation strategy: The move signals a shift toward broad “portfolio logic” rather than a specific bet on the cannabis sector.
- Timeline: Expected to close in the second half of 2026, pending shareholder and regulatory approval.
Both acquisitions are expected to close in the second half of 2026. When they do, MJBizCon will become part of what the Apollo funds project will be a unified business-to-business experiential events and media platform combining approximately 160 events across specialized markets.
Apollo, a financial-industry behemoth with more than $1 trillion in assets under management as of early 2026, does not appear to be making a targeted bet on cannabis. Emerald owns a wide range of established event brands across multiple industries, and the bigger financial logic of the deal appears to sit with that broader portfolio. MJBizCon is simply an inherited asset inside a much bigger package. But because it remains the cannabis industry’s largest annual business gathering, any ownership shift matters to the industry.
The fate of MJBizCon
Emerald, on the other hand, made a big investment in cannabis when it bought MJBiz in early 2022 for $120 million in cash, with additional payments tied to performance. At the time, MJBiz’s annual revenue across several related properties totaled about $27 million, and the deal represented nearly half Emerald’s market value. Emerald described the acquisition as a move into a high-growth business vertical. Yet Emerald never seemed to fully grasp the nuances of the complex, heavily regulated cannabis industry, and MJBizCon never comfortably fit within its portfolio of events for the food-and-beverage, medical devices, construction, action sports, manufacturing, and advertising sectors.
For the cannabis industry, the question is whether MJBizCon becomes a stronger property under another ownership structure or continues to drift inside a broad portfolio where cannabis is not completely understood.
MJBizCon is still the biggest annual trade show for cannabis businesses, which means its health matters more than who owns it. The show remains a central meeting place for operators, brands, investors, service providers, and dealmakers. If the event weakens, the industry loses more than a revenue line. It loses one of its largest commercial convening points.
A new era for industry convening?
Apollo did not announce any cannabis-specific plans, investment commitments, or brand changes tied to the transaction. The company framed the deal as a larger consolidation play in business events and media. That makes sense from Apollo’s perspective.
From the cannabis industry’s perspective, a larger owner with more capital eventually could invest in the event, reposition it, offload it, or simply manage it differently. Big-portfolio logic does not always translate into sharper execution in a niche sector, especially one as politically messy and commercially uneven as cannabis.
For now, the clearest takeaway is simple: A $1.5-billion deal just added some intrigue to the future of cannabis’s biggest trade show. After several uneven years under Emerald, that may be the most important part of the story.
