So. I am back from Dallas Comic Con. I always do my best to focus on the positive about the shows I do. However, I think this needs to be addressed. Dallas Comic Con is a shining example of how these mega Comic Con companies are destroying Comicbook Conventions. Prior to this year, Dallas Comic Con was a regionally operated show and was a huge success. However, this year was its first year run by the internation company known as Fan Expo. And they massacred it in the exact same fashion the other large companies destroy regional shows when they moved in. First, they overloaded the show with a million highly popular celebrities. Whats wrong with that? First, the hugely popular celebs require high guaranteed rates to show up. Typically, a convention will have one or two of these big demand celebs and a bunch of B level demand celebs. This works great because the overall expenses for the con is kept at a reasonable rate so the show can keep the admission rates low for customers. Which means they have more money to spend with the vendors. However, when a convention books 10-20 big name celebs, they suddenly have a HUGE amount of money at risk. Which means they have to charge very high admission fees and very high autograph fees. In an economy where the average household is down $5k in annual income, the attendees are already tighter on the disposable income they have to spend at a show. And the convention jacking up prices does not help the vendors (who are also charged higher table fees by the con). Then to add further salt in the wound to the vendors, these conventions are so concerned about recouping their large investment in celeb appearances that they screw the artists and vendors over by putting the main attraction (the celebs) right by the front entrance to make sure the fans go to the celebs first and spend all their money on autographs before they even walk through the show floor. When they do this, two things happen. 1) fans spend most of their time standing in lines, not visiting vendors. And 2) once they finally do go see vendors they are exhausted from standing in lines for 2 days and have no money left to spend on vendors. Celebs should be placed in the back of the convention or scattered around the convention to encpurage the foot traffic to flow THROUGH the convention. Not bottleneck it at the front. Almost EVERY artist and vendor I spoke with at Dallas Comic Con lost money or broke even at that show. It bombed. Meanwhile, everyone I spoke with who did MotorCity (a regionally run show) had amazing sales. What Dallas showed me is that Fan Expo is a company I do not plan to do future conventions with. They could care less about the vendors and artists and how we did. Unfortunately, because of their short sightedness, most people I spoke with said they would never do that show again. Me included. I want to give a huge FYI to these promoters. The artists and vendors ARE the atraction at a comic con. Its the celebs who are the side attraction. And since we are paying you for our spaces, that makes US your customers. We pay you for a spot and for you to bring paying customers to us. If you dont like that, then stop inviting us at all and just turn your show into a celebrity signing and leave us out of it. But the dirty secret is you already know the artists and vendors ARE the main attractions and that stand alone celeb signing bring in a small fraction of what they do when we are there. Nuff said.
Posted on: Wed, 21 May 2014 04:16:01 +0000
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