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BlizzCon, Big Conventions Coveted by Anaheim Center

If there’s a grain of truth in the rumor mill, the Anaheim Convention Center might have to wave goodbye to one of its fastest-growing events.

Blizzard Entertainment Inc.’s annual fanfest, BlizzCon, last year was rumored to be jumping ship for a bigger venue—in Las Vegas.

Some 27,000 fans of Blizzard’s massively popular online games came together at the company’s annual convention, BlizzCon, which took place in August last year in Anaheim.

This was the fourth BlizzCon put on by the company there, and it was almost four times bigger than its first show in 2006.

“BlizzCon not being here would be a huge loss,” said Mindy Abel, vice president of convention sales with the Anaheim/Orange County Visitor & Convention Bureau. “It’s been a great experience as they have grown here. It would be devastating because we love having them here and it is a huge economic boost for the destination.”

Blizzard, a unit of France’s Vivendi SA, is Orange County’s biggest software maker with more than $1 billion in yearly sales.

Blizzard puts on the event for its fans.

BlizzCon also acts like a corporate retreat for Blizzard’s development and creative teams, who get juiced up by the fans’ zeal.

Some 1,200 Blizzard workers from around the world come to Anaheim to work at the convention and interact with fans.

It’s pretty convenient for the more than 1,000 workers based at Blizzard’s headquarters in Irvine. Others are flown in from Blizzard’s sites in the U.S. and Europe.

“Because of its proximity to our main Irvine headquarters, the Anaheim Convention Center allows a large number of Blizzard developers and employees, as well as their friends and family, to attend the show and interact with the players,” a Blizzard spokesperson said in an e-mail. “It’s also helpful to be close to our home base in case any last-minute issues arise.”

Rumors about BlizzCon moving started in November, when word spread that this year’s event was set to move to the Las Vegas Convention Center and take place at the end of July.

News got around fast after a handful of blogs and video game news Web sites posted the story that BlizzCon 2010 would be in Sin City.

Some die-hard fans even went so far as to snatch up cheap flights and hotel rooms.

Blizzard sought to quickly dispel online reports.

“We haven’t announced any details regarding our next BlizzCon, though we can confirm that it will not be held in Las Vegas,” the company said.

It also tried to discourage fans from making BlizzCon-related travel plans.

Shortly after, a spokesman for the Las Vegas Convention Center said that the BlizzCon listing was a “clerical error” and it was yanked from the site.

The spokesman did confirm that the city has had talks with Blizzard about the show.

Local officials in Anaheim also have been mum about Blizzard’s plans.

“Nothing has been confirmed yet and there are still discussions going on,” Abel said.

Blizzard itself declined to comment on the status of its discussions.

“Our main goal with BlizzCon is to provide an epic experience for attendees while fostering interaction and community among gamers and our development teams, and the Anaheim Convention Center is a great place to make that happen,” a Blizzard spokesperson said.

Blizzard’s hordes of fans seemed to like the idea of heading to Sin City.

“Attend BlizzCon all day, gamble all night, sleep never—the thought of a Las Vegas BlizzCon pretty much sent us into immediate spasms of joy,” Daniel Whitcomb said in a blog post on an official “World of Warcraft” fan Web site called wow.com. “Don’t get me wrong, Anaheim’s pretty cool and all, but it isn’t Las Vegas, that’s for sure.”

The biggest issue Blizzard faces is that it has virtually maxed out its ability to allow more fans to attend BlizzCon, based on the space arrangement it prefers for the show.

BlizzCon was expanded this past year from three convention halls to four.

“We are about maxed out at 30,000,” Blizzard’s operations chief Paul Sams told the Business Journal last year.

Blizzard has tried to manage the demand for tickets to the show by streaming it online and through a special deal with DirecTV Group Inc.—some 50,000 people watched the event last year in these manners.

The show is set up so that the entire lower level of the convention center is dedicated to the retrieval of badges and goody-bags.

Hundreds of thousands of square feet are cordoned off to manage very long lines of people.

The four halls of the convention center are set up so there’s lots of space to mill around. There are many dedicated areas for playing games, which feature rows and rows of long tables full of computers.

A lot of the BlizzCon programming is centered on events, such as talks, contests, discussion panels and concerts.

Of course, the convention center can hold much more than 30,000. Some 85,000 descend on Anaheim each year for the NAMM Show, a trade show for musicians and makers of musical instruments.

“It’s about how you utilize the space,” Abel said. “We have the flexibility to start small and grow as their event grows.”

A lot depends on the flow of the programming and how it’s organized.

“Other events have concurrent things that repeat, so you can disperse the people more evenly,” Abel said.

Before the initial BlizzCon, the convention center helped host an internal Blizzard event.

Growing Fan Base

Five years ago, Anaheim didn’t know how big BlizzCon would become.

That’s when the company’s blockbuster online game “World of Warcraft” was just hitting the market.

Some 12 million play “Warcraft” these days, and Blizzard’s other main video game franchises, “StarCraft” and “Diablo,” also count millions of fans.

“For us as a destination, it was a huge win since they have their roots locally,” Abel said.

BlizzCon has parallels to Walt Disney’s D23 Expo, a convention for Disney fans, which was held for the first time in Anaheim in September.

“We worked in conjunction with Walt Disney Studios and it was a great experience,” Abel said. “Blizzard has that same kind of heart and soul because of its strong fan base.”

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