So I find it interesting that we have had very little content in the newsletters about how badge sales are going. Past couple of years we have had badge sell outs well prior to this close to the con. Are there more badges available, or less people attending. Is this Gen Con less appealing than the last couple?
Thoughts?
GenCon posted about a month ago they were very close to selling out the 4 day badges. My guess is by the time the Con hits those will be gone and only single day tickets will be available. It'll still be crazy packed regardless.
Despite Gen Con's early predictions, it appears this year will mimic last year as opposed to Gen Con 50. We're now 9 days before Gen Con starts.
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Alec Usticke, Fans of Gen Con Facebook Group
Cool chart Alec.
This is actually a good thing. Supply and demand economics say that you want to sell all of your product at the highest possible price. If GenCon sold out months ago they might see it as a sign that they should raise ticket prices next year.
Are there more badges this year as compared to the last few? That would impact sellout dates.
I don't think it's a stretch to say the 50th anniversary event was a bit of an outlier in regards to ticket sales--there was strong incentive to be at that GC specifically, and afterwards it looked like demand returned to normal. Which is a good thing, as someone above pointed out, otherwise GC might have had to substantially raise prices!
But it is particularly interesting as attendance either held steady or increased last year, depending on how you read their press release, suggesting that they definitely increased the number of badges available. I suspect they have done the same this year, if that is at all possible.
I think at GC 50, they increased the event space with the expansion into Lucas Oil, but didnt wildly increase the number of badges available. Its in their best interest to keep the attendance and available badges as close as possible, so they released more badges the next year and this year, to try to more accrurately gauge actual attendance.
I'm sure there is a practical safe attendance for the space, but its probably higher than we think.
Its a hypothesis, and I cant test it since we dont have access to those numbers. Not to mention, attendance isn't like a football game, since people are in different parts of the convention center and surrounding hotels.
Was it this year or last year that they ditched the pre-reg discount on badges? That could have something to do with badges not selling out as quickly also. I know I wasn't in a rush to buy them this year for sure because of that reason.
Either that year or the year after, because I remember thinking it'd only be logical to ditch the pre-reg discount if tickets could potentially sell out before the pre-reg discount ended.
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Alec Usticke, Fans of Gen Con Facebook Group
