ASIS is being deceptive with its conference reporting, effectively inflating the event's real actual attendance.
What they try, but struggle to do, is report 'registrants' but, as our examples below show, they clearly are misrepresenting it as actual attendees.
Registrants Vs Attendees
Actual attendance is historically ~17% less than registrants reported, thousands of attendees less, so the difference is material.
Here is the claim from their post-2017 event press release:

Whatever 'attracting' they claim, it was far less than 22,000 that were 'attracted' to Dallas during that week.
Registrants represent anyone who registers online, often for free, whereas attendees are only the people who actually physically showed up at the event, e.g., this year in Dallas. For the companies spending $10+ million on this event, what they care about is real physical attendees.
Deceptive Examples
Start with ASIS' CEO, who last week during the event, on camera, claimed that their conference 'pulls about 22,000 people every year':
They clearly did not 'pull' 22,000 'people' to the event. Unfortunately, even ASIS CEO gets caught up in the deception between attendees and registrants.
He is not alone. Here is an ASIS board of director member saying explictly 22,000 attendees:

And here is from ASIS own event website that, yet again, says 22,000 professionals at the event.

This is unfortunately not new at ASIS, as we reported earlier in the year, examples including:

And:

Deviation From Standards and Their Own History
For whatever reason, ASIS has decided to deceive and retreat from both event standards and their own historical approach.
For example, for the 2015 show, ASIS reported actual physical attendance:
Registration for ASIS 2015 totaled more than 21,000. Verified preliminary attendance was 17,484 which was below expectations
And ASIS main competitor, ISC West, consistently reports actual attendees.
Do Better
ASIS is doing better on some fronts. Reaction was positive for having former President Bush, Mark Cuban and the reception at the Cowboy's AT&T stadium; even exhibitor satisfaction, though still not great, improved in 2017.
It is unfair and below the standards of security professionals to deceive about attendance. ASIS can certainly do better here.