Freeman's new Pre-Event Edition report argues that "late registration" is really late decision-making. Skift reports that 84% of attendees decide to come at least four weeks before they register. For organisers, the registration page is not where interest begins. It is where hesitation ends, and the information and cancellation terms around it decide when people click.
What did Freeman actually find?
Freeman published The Pre-Event Edition: How People Find, Choose, and Prep for Your Event on 13 October, based on a September survey of more than 3,400 attendees and exhibitors. According to Freeman's release, 54% of attendees start planning their onsite activities three or more weeks before the event, sometimes before they have decided to attend. Seven in ten say a strict cancellation policy would push their registration closer to the event date.
The release also says only 18% of attendees approve their own funding, so most have to persuade someone else, and that 21% of attendees have used AI to find events. Of those, 53% say it changed which events they consider. On the exhibitor side, 56% want to know what types of organisation will be attending, while only 16% rate events as very or extremely effective at explaining the return on exhibiting or sponsoring.
Skift Meetings' coverage adds the headline figure, that 84% of attendees decide to attend at least four weeks before they register. That number appears in Skift's report of the research rather than in the release, and neither piece publishes a margin of error, so treat it as a strong direction rather than a measured constant.
Why does "late" registration happen?
Freeman's Ken Holsinger tells Skift that early registration mainly serves the organiser, through forecasting, room blocks and catering numbers, while the attendee gains little by committing early. In his reading, the gap between deciding and registering is filled by questions the event has not yet answered: who is speaking, which sessions run when, which exhibitors will be there, and what happens if plans change.
Two of the report's other numbers explain the shape of that gap. When most attendees have to justify the spend to someone else, the registration page has to hand them material they can forward, not a countdown timer. And when seven in ten would wait because of a rigid cancellation policy, the organiser has quietly designed the delay.
The deadline you set is a forecast for your spreadsheet, not a reason for your delegate to click.
What this means for event organisers
The practical lesson is that the registration form is the last step of a decision made earlier, so everything before it has to do the persuading. Put the programme, speakers and exhibitor list on the page as soon as each one is confirmed, rather than waiting for a perfect launch. Write the cancellation terms in plain sight and make them as flexible as your venue contract allows. And give the person who needs sign-off a page they can forward to their manager without editing.
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It also changes how to read your own registration curve. A spike in the last fortnight is not necessarily a sign that people are disorganised. It may simply be the first day your event stopped being a question mark. If your numbers cluster late every year, test the information release date before you test another early-bird discount.
For exhibitors the same logic applies in reverse. With 56% wanting to know who is attending, a registration form that captures company and role in structured fields gives you an honest audience summary to share long before doors open. On eventcloud, each ticket group can carry its own form, so delegates, exhibitors and speakers answer only the questions that apply to them, and the answers are stored on the attendee record and can be filtered and exported to Excel.
What the coverage did not say: the cost of the wait
Neither source covers what a long hesitation window does to your operations, so it is worth doing the sums for your own event. If most decisions are made weeks before the money arrives, then the weeks between are the period in which your headcount estimate is least reliable, your hotel block is most exposed, and your catering numbers are a guess.
Capacity is the one lever you can pull in that window without harming the attendee. You can cap a ticket group or a session at a number you can serve, and let the rest of the event flex. On eventcloud, capacity limits are optional and set per ticket group or per session, and registrations themselves are unlimited on every plan, which means a late surge is an operational question and never a billing event. Your flat per-user fee is the same whether the registration curve is a gentle slope or a cliff.
A short checklist before your next launch
Publish the first confirmed speaker and the first confirmed exhibitor the day each is signed, not at the full programme launch.
State your cancellation and transfer terms on the registration page itself, not in a footer.
Offer something concrete to early registrants besides a discount, such as a better hotel option or priority access to a session.
Give approvers a forwardable summary: dates, programme, audience and a plain cost.
Capture company and role at registration so exhibitors can see who is coming.
Freeman's full report is available through its own site, and the nine recommendations it lists there are worth reading against your own registration data. Our reading is simply that the most useful thing an organiser can do with it is stop apologising for "late" registrants and start asking what they were waiting to learn.
