New York Comic Con is the new king in town…just ask them.
or
can someone out there who claims to be “press” actually do their job?
I’m not going to list my credentials, or body or work, or award nominations, or mention the decade of comic book convention exhibiting I’ve done, because it doesn’t matter, apparently no one checks anything anyway.
I noticed on the internet a big hubbub about New York Comic Con (NYCC) and saw website after website post a story about how it had overtaken Comic-Con International (CCI) in attendance this year.
http://io9.com/holy-crap-new-york-comic-con-is-bigger-than-san-diego-1646158769
Which if true is a pretty big deal. CCI has been number one with no one else even close for about a decade now. So, this would be news. Big news. This would be like the sun setting in the east from now on. and who told us this is true? NYCC did.
“ReedPOP’s Global Senior Vice President Lance Festerman, that this year’s convention attendance exceeds 151,000″
and all the comic book “news” websites just said ” oh the sun sets in the east now? cool! I’ll upload that story for you ..lalalalala -cut- paste -click.”
The people running the show said they now have the biggest show in the U.S….gee I don’t know you could just say things which shouldn’t be a surprise since I created Batman…go repost that, it has all the same credibility.
…NOBODY IS QUESTIONING THESE NUMBERS?! I had a stomach full of seeing bogus numbers reported by conventions to begin with…but this was ridiculous. And NO ONE bothered to ask ANY questions?
The second I saw the story, not caring one way or the other, I said to myself “uh…how is that possible?”
I say again, I don’t really care. NYCC is pretty well run, seemed like decent folks when I dealt with them. So is CCI. Actually, now that I think about it the same people who run NYCC run C2E2 which is right in my backyard so IF this was true it would actually be good for me. However, I don’t just swallow every headline because I want to believe it. And when someone declares themselves to be the new top dog based on numbers, I’d kinda need to hear those numbers from more than just their mouth.
Again…I said to myself “uh…how is that possible?”
I asked that because I have been at both venues. The shear SIZE of the San Diego convention center dwarfs the NYCC venue. The San Diego con center is seven city blocks long, and they fill it to capacity over FIVE days to reach 130,000. They sell out of tickets within a month of opening tickets sales. They “sell out” meaning they cannot sell anymore. Do you know why they can’t sell any more? Because the fire marshal will not let them sell any more. Because that is the job of a fire marshal, to make sure that large events in his city do not go beyond the lawful capacity of the building, so the public is not in danger. That is what they do…they tell promoters how many tickets they are allowed to sell/how many people they can let in. Otherwise SDCC could sell tickets until they didn’t have any more room in the bank vault for all the cash. So, I am supposed to believe the Javits center in NY can somehow manage to accommodate the same number of attendees in four days as a seven city block long building filled to capacity over five days? Uhm…I don’t believe that. That was my first thought.
A little digging produced the lawful capacity allowed in the sections of the Javits center being used by NYCC.
Research here—
–http://www.javitscenter.com/plans/plan_level_3.htm
http://www.javitscenter.com/plans/plan_north_pavilion.htm
max trade-show occupancy for the sections they used work out to 20,298 so even maxed out over all four days it would work out to 81,192. The reported 151,000 works to 37,750 per day so they would have had to oversell one-time capacity each day by 85% to reach those numbers… so they would have to essentially have 100% turnover each day to accommodate those numbers.
If they managed to do this they shouldn’t be in charge of a comic book convention, they should be in charge of JFK international airport. That’s 375,00 people through the door each day in a building legally able to hold 22,000. To be clear…we are to believe that 22,000 entered and after that no one could get in until someone else left…and each day they managed to turn over 15,500 people. That comic convention must have really SUCKED if 15,500 people each day entered, left early and never came back. And from what I hear, it didn’t suck. There as a lot to see and do which make the notion of a daily exodus and migration of 15500 people seem well….oh…NOT TRUE. I don’t buy it.
…again max legal daily capacity 20,298
That’s it..that is as many people as you can put in there at one time.
They claim they sold 151,000 tickets to get into that building, IF that is true…well we won’t even TOUCH on how irresponsible that is. Because that would mean
PAY ATTENTION NOW..
That would mean that NYCC sold tickets to 85% more people than they could guarantee would be allowed in…!? Is my thinking correct there? I think it is…but that doesn’t really matter because they didn’t sell 151,000 tickets.
I read that nycc had some fancy tag in tag out system where they could keep people flowing in and out efficiently. That sounds well and good but sure doesn’t sound like enough to get a fire marshal to allow you to over sell by 85%
Of course my numbers could be off a bit. I am, after all, not a reporter…and none of the ACTUAL “reporters” have bother to do their jobs…things could be WORSE since most tickets and attendees would have marked Saturday and Sunday to go. We have only NYCC as a go to source for the breakdown on attendance by the each day. I have of course seen NO ONE report or bother to ASK for the day by day breakdown. It is safe to assume that their alleged Saturday attendance would make this claim even more absurd than it already is.
Cynical people might at this point think well…they have some clout so the fire Marshall may have let them slide. Fire marshals don’t let things slide, especially in New York city..home of ground zero, and a 85% oversell is not “letting anything slide”, and a fire marshal ain’t going to listen to some song and dance about a tag in tag out system and just left some comic book convention put people and more importantly his job at risk. That is just not how it works. CCI has enough clout to tell San Diego that they either expand the convention center (at a cost of over 500 million dollars) just for their show or they will leave, and SD a city in a bankrupt state is expanding the convention center…that is clout. But not enough but they still cant get the fire marshal to let them sell more tickets.
150,000 , that is Yankee stadium filled to capacity 2 and one half times! do you think George Steinbrenner has clout? don’t you think he’d love to jam more people into Yankee stadium during playoffs. you bet he would, maybe we should send him to NYCC so he can see their magical tag in tag out machines. And how did they accomplish this in and out flow of humanity even with the precise count of the magical tag in tag out scanners? Looking it purely as a in and out flow of people, were 15,000 people waiting outside spilling into the street? As I said the San Diego convention center is seven city blocks long and has an entrance every 30 yards in order to keep up with the in and out flow. And they have a line longer than the convention center itself before the doors open.
and who are these 150,00 people?! NYCC say they moved that many people through the door. Nobody asks any questions? Who are these 150,000 people? all New Yorkers? the YANKEES have to have a pretty big important series to sell out their stadium three days in a row, and I am going to go ahead and say there are more Yankee fans than comic book readers in the NY area. SDCC brings that many people in because it is summer and kids are off of school and people are taking vacations anyway and it has movie previews and more movie stars than you can shake a stick at, a public transportation system second to none, it is in a safe and beautiful area and about ten minutes from the airport…with massive hotels in walking distance the area. It is perfectly equipped to have that many people just show up for a weekend . This show was in NY… in October.
This does not add up any way you look at it. So NYCC has a lot of explaining to do. starting with how they managed to get the fire marshal to turn a blind eye towards their overselling tickets by 85%. T he miraculous logistical flow of 150,00o people thought a 22,000 capacity building in four days. Going back to “who are these people”, apparently they are people who briskly walk through the entire hall in four hours, and leave never to return.
I saw site after site blindly reporting the number…but no so much as one even asking for the day by day breakdowns. Because we all know that the weekend was busier than thursday and Friday making the legally allowed occupancy of 20,000 an even more bucket of ice-cold reality on the pie in the sky number if 150,00 paid attendees.
NOW…you comic book website “news” people. I have met many of you. you are not this lazy. You are ( mostly) bright and ambitious and love comics. How about you ask some questions? I’ll be perfectly happy to admit I am wrong, I just wrote this on the fly after seeing the story …and hey, maybe my calculator is broken…but there sure the hell is a lot of holes in this statement that they had 151,000 paid attendees. How about you ask some questions and get some answers before you just post up a story that someone told you was true? NYCC has declared itself the king. shall you just bow down or are you at least going at ASK to see the crown.
and allow me to remind you that if they make this claim…and use it to sell booth space, or book guests and the claim is untrue they are committing FRAUD.