Comic-Con News

It has been announced that Comic-Con International will remain in San Diego through 2018. The new contract has been signed, which will come as no great surprise to those of you who read this blog.

I never like to say "never" but I'd be very surprised to see it move anywhere else for a long, long time. The city really wants to keep it there. The convention organizers really want to keep it there. The only possible impediment has occasionally been when someone involved in the process momentarily tried to get greedy. This deal was delayed because several of the hotels that service the convention center were trying to get out of obligations to provide a certain number of rooms at discount prices. They figured if they could, they could charge astronomical fees for those rooms. They were apparently persuaded they were trying to kill the golden gander.

I also think that people who say the con should move to Los Angeles or Las Vegas or somewhere else are unaware how complicated those negotiations and contracts could be. I'm not saying it can never be done but it's not like deciding one year to stay at the Marriott instead of the Hyatt. It's a whole new business relationship with a different pricing structure and different players now operating without hard evidence of how many will attend, what impact the con will have on local businesses, how expensive it will be to configure the convention space properly, etc.

The convention and San Diego have learned how to work together and how to do the convention in that city in that facility. While there are always ways in which it can be improved, I think they have most of the bugs out and don't need to start over again elsewhere. I also don't want to deal with the traffic around the L.A. Convention Center or near Disneyland, nor do I want to be in Las Vegas when it's 107°. Which is what it's going to be there next week while we're all in 70° San Diego.