San Diego Comic-Con 2020 Has Been Cancelled
The news doesn’t come as a surprise – and it’s the right thing to do – but it’s still sad. The convention has been an annual event for comic book fans and geeks in general for fifty years. This is the first time they’ve had to full out cancel.
For the first time in its 50-year history San Diego Comic Convention (SDCC), the organizers behind the annual pop culture celebration, announced today with deep regret that there will be no Comic-Con in 2020. The event will instead return to the San Diego Convention Center from July 22-25, 2021.
Recognizing that countless attendees save and plan for its conventions each year, and how many exhibitors and stakeholders rely upon its events for a major portion of their livelihood, they had hoped to delay this decision in anticipation that COVID-19 concerns might lessen by summer. Continuous monitoring of health advisories and recent statements by the Governor of California have made it clear that it would not be safe to move forward with plans for this year.
Similarly, WonderCon Anaheim, which was to have been held April 10-12, 2020 will return to the Anaheim Convention Center from March 26-28, 2021.
In addition to their conventions, Comic-Con has been planning a major renovation of Balboa Park’s Federal Building to be completed for the grand opening of the Comic-Con Museum in the summer of 2021. However, the COVID-19 situation has had an effect on those efforts as well. As such, they will be rephasing the Museum’s initially planned major renovations, but will not scale back the experience to be offered to visitors upon the Museum’s grand opening. They anticipate releasing building plans illustrating the Museum’s transformation and sharing more information about those efforts in the coming months.
… “Extraordinary times require extraordinary measures and while we are saddened to take this action, we know it is the right decision,” said David Glanzer, spokesperson for the organization. “We eagerly look forward to the time when we can all meet again and share in the community we all love and enjoy.”
Estimated attendance for SDCC this year was around 165,000 people from all over the globe. The economic impact is going to ripple out from the large studios down to the Lyft/Uber drivers that are going to be missing out on a huge income bump. We experienced the same thing here in Austin (where BoLS is based) after the cancellation of SXSW.
Crowds Waiting to Enter the San Deigo Convention Center
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Garcetti have said that if there aren’t major developments in containing the COVID19 outbreak they will cancel large events like music festivals and sports this summer and possibly through the rest of the year. It’s expected the Bay Area will likely follow suit, as well as other cities around the country.
I am anticipating that we’ll see something like this from GenCon in the coming weeks. It takes time to get everything sorted before announcing – especially with a convention that pulls in over 60,000 people and has hundreds of vendors.
Crowd Waiting to Enter the GenCon Vendor Hall
It’s becoming clear that 2020 is going to be the year of cancellations and re-scheduling while we all work together to contain the spread of the virus. What state and local level events are you missing right now?
