NAB 2025: Key takeaways, industry challenges and the show’s uncertain future
The 2025 NAB Show provided a stark look at the evolving broadcast and media landscape. While attendance numbers reflected current market challenges, the event also highlighted significant shifts driven by economic pressures and technological advancements. Let’s dive into the critical technology themes that the Caretta Research team observed on the NAB Show floor.
Navigating tariff uncertainties: Impact and industry response
While many were expecting the tariffs to change again before they really impact – as indeed, they partly did on the final day of the show, some vendors, including the hardware-focused ones, were refusing to talk about it, while several were talking about increasing product assembly within the U.S.
The most common comment was “it won’t affect our customers”, implying that vendors would absorb the impact of any tariffs. While many media tech hardware products have high margins, swallowing the tariffs would impact already-precarious vendor profitability.
The current uncertainty is worse than actual tariffs for some vendors. As one said, “at least if we knew the actual impact we’d be able to put a plan in place.”
But (and it’s a big ‘but’), economic uncertainty has a much wider impact on industry confidence and media company revenues. Vendors at NAB (both hardware and software) expressed concerns of investment slowing down and projects being put on hold.
Analysis of Caretta Portal data shows the impact on the overall market is minimal – just 6% of total media tech market value is sales of on-prem hardware products to U.S. customers. Of course, vendors reliant on selling proprietary hardware products are potentially impacted far more.
Software-defined workflows: The mainstream moment
NAB 2025 marks the point at which software-defined workflows become mainstream, as several planets aligned.
At Caretta Research, we’ve already been tracking many media tech buyers’ preference for shifting away from proprietary single-purpose hardware appliances to flexible software-based solutions running on standard COTS servers or in the cloud. Buyers are talking of switching to software as their current hardware assets come up for replacement, and cloud- and software-based live production tools is one of the fastest growing market segments we’re tracking (11.3% CAGR 2018-24).
Talk of the NAB Show’s South Hall was the EBU’s Dynamic Media Facility and MXL protocol, allowing (in simple terms) components of live production workflows to work together purely in a software environment, exchanging media in memory rather than needing routing. I can’t recall an industry initiative gaining so much attention so quickly before.
While Donald Trump probably isn’t focusing on live production workflows on a day-to-day basis, a side-effect of the tariffs is also accelerating this shift away from hardware to software. The NAB Show floor in five years’ time will have far fewer hardware products.
Achieving agility: Flexible resources and cost optimisation
Closely linked to software-defined workflows, multiple media company CTOs described their vision for far more flexible facilities – for example, control rooms that can scale up or down (in software with flexible licensing) to suit any production’s needs and budget.
This goes beyond tech – there’s also a desire to have personnel able to work more efficiently and flexibly across multiple workflows and production types, including working remotely.
Alongside, there’s a sharper focus on cost controls, and tracking and optimising the cost of production technology more closely, even in real time.
Cloud cost and sovereignty: Global considerations
Political and economic turmoil in the U.S. is causing many international media companies, particularly those with a news and public service mission, to question their reliance on the American hyperscalers for their public cloud infrastructure.
In the absence of serious European cloud providers, the long-announced AWS European Sovereign Cloud initiative was suddenly being talked about.
And in the year that technology budgets are really under pressure, it was notable how many vendors are using cloud providers beyond the big three, with Oracle Cloud and Akamai gaining particular attention.
Leadership in transition: New executives drive innovation in media technology
Many technology vendors were fielding new C-suite executives at NAB 2025, with some of the biggest vendor names under new management.
Major suppliers including Avid, Brightcove, Chyron, Dalet, Grass Valley, Telestream, Vizrt and Zixi all have relatively new ownership or leadership in place, often with execs coming in from outside the established broadcast and media industry.
In many cases this has been a result of private equity owners wanting to see faster and better results. We think this is a good thing: bringing in management from outside the industry echo chamber shakes off the “we’ve always done it that way” culture, and adds a dynamism and new ideas that are sorely needed if some of our biggest vendors are to remain relevant, meet customers’ needs, and thrive.
Streaming and advertising: Opportunities under the radar
West Hall, typically home of the more “digital” vendors felt a little quiet (multiple vendors commented on this), and the NAB Show conference agenda lacked any obvious acknowledgement of some of the biggest streaming elephants in the cloud (how to translate linear revenues to streaming, building and using first-party data for advertising, the rise of retail media and ad-oriented CTV platforms).
On the plus side, some streaming and ad tech vendors told us that they were seeing a notable increase in interest from North American customers – indicating that market interest is moving in the right direction.
Overall it felt the balance of NAB 2025 was tilted a little too far towards live production, without addressing the more fundamental future of the broadcast and media industry and its business models.
People and culture: The human element of technology
A recurring theme in our discussions was the importance of people and technology leaders’ role in effecting cultural change.
One driver for this is the challenge broadcast and media companies, and their tech vendors, are facing in competing for talent in engineering, development and AI.
And on a practical level, CTOs are becoming much more aware of the importance of major technology projects being business led and gaining business buy-in, rather than being done “to” content and production departments by the technology team.
The future of the NAB Show: Addressing dissatisfaction and cost concerns
Vendors are increasingly complaining about the NAB Show itself, especially given the decline in visitor numbers – they’re questioning the ROI and there’s talk of NAB slipping into being more of a North American “regional” show rather than the global position it’s long held.
Meanwhile visitors, in the face of strict travel budgets, are sending fewer people, or questioning the value of attending at all – especially when, as one person put it, “vendors don’t release anything new any more.”
Building work at the LVCC venue itself hasn’t helped, with very long distances between halls negatively impacting the visitor (and vendor) experience. That’s on top of skyrocketing costs in Las Vegas and at the convention centre itself – $6 for a bottle of water feels like price gouging, and that’s a snip compared with exhibitor costs.
We’d urge the NAB to focus on the visitor experience, plan a better layout and work with the LVCC on prices if they are serious about arresting the current decline of the show and keeping it relevant – as it should be in a changing industry.