Tag: con wars!

As announced last evening, CCI: San Diego's board, despite intense wooing from other cities, has decided to keep Comic-Con in San Diego. The announcement has been met with generally universal relief thus far. Yes, we moan, we complain, but exchanging the city of San Diego's mild temperatures and convenient layout for the bland boulevards of Anaheim or gang-infested alleys of Los Angeles wouldn't have really been much of an improvement. It isn't much of a surprise, really -- things had been going this way for a while and it was very clear that the board wanted to stay in San Diego.

It's official, via a press release. After long, complex negotiations that involved serious offers from Los Angeles and Anaheim, Comic-Con International: San Diego has just announced they will stay in the city they are named for. With the Con's contract with the convention center expiring in 2012, and the facilities MAXED out for space, everyone has been wondering if the con would move to a different city that offered more perks, The city of San Diego has been seen as indifferent to the biggest civilian convention of the year, although that has changed in the last couple of years.

Suck it, gastroentologists! Comic-Con does SO make lots of money for the city of San Diego! At long last an in-depth survey has shown what most long suspected: the San Diego Comic-Con is a cash cow for the local economy. While the con's own internal estimates have the economic impact of the 130,000+ fans who attend Comic-Con every year at more than $50 million, official estimates by the local convention bureau had the show's fiscal impact much lower -- $32 million in 2008. However, an actual survey of con attendees in 2008 has revealed the stunning truth: the con brings in $163 million a year, QUADRUPLE what was thought.

The ongoing contest for the hand of Comic-Con International took another turn last week when San Diego Convention Center Corp. sent out an email to local hotels asking them to put in writing what they will charge for hotel rooms for Con. With Los Angeles and Anaheim's bids for the show getting more and more serious -- and Comic-Con organizers taking their time to make a decision -- it's yet another way to sweeten the pot and keep the Con in San Diego.

Are the Con Wars East over, or at least moving into a new, less militarized phase? The Beatand his Wizard army has announced a MAJOR pullback from hostilities, moving the 2010 Big Apple Con, which has been scheduled directly opposite and 20 blocks north of the New York Comic-con on October 7-10, to October 1-3, a week earlier.

Wow, Ultimate Con-Wars is heating up with this interview with LA Inc SVP Senior Vice President Michael Krouse and avp of Media Relations & Communications Carol Martinez. Krouse is the driving force behind LA's bid for the San Diego Comic-Con -- an ongoing wooing that Krouse has been pressing for years. And in this interview he lays it all on the line, baby, he''ll work.

Oh, San Diego, how you have changed your tune. Increasingly serious about keeping what they now admit is tens of millions of dollars in revenue to local businesses, and the glamor and publicity that hosting...

So many shows, so little time.... § Tim O'Shea hit FLUKE, the indie comics show in Athens, GA which sounds like it went well. § The Wizard World Anaheim Comic-Con was this weekend; here...

Incredibly, The Beat is on the move AGAIN. While we're in transit back to base, a few quick thoughts on C2E2, based on dozens of conversations with publisher, creators, and attendees. • It was a...

In our debilitated state we can only link to Rich Johnston's comprehensive write-up: of the local Chicago press take on C2E2 and the it's Rosemont rival, Wizard World Chicago. The Chicago Reader quotes Wizard's...

As covered extensively in the local San Diego press, a complex real estate deal has been okayed which would allow the San Diego Convention Center to expand. Control over a seven-acre tract out in back...

For several years the ordeal known as Hoteloween has been one of the the signature terrors of attending the San Diego Comic-Con -- namely, the frustration of trying to get a decent room while...