The Anaheim Convention Center is still waiting to hear from officials with Comic-Con International about potentially moving the annual convention out of San Diego.
But its host city doesn’t plan to let it go without a fight.
This year’s sold-out convention, which ended July 25, drew about 126,000 visitors daily to the San Diego Convention Center, and with vendors and global media representatives factored in, the total visitor count was more than 140,000.
All those visitors add up to what convention center officials now estimate to be a $163 million economic impact on San Diego County. That’s well above previous estimates of $40 million to $60 million.
Comic-Con has been held in San Diego since its 1970 inception, and the 2010 event marked its 20th year at the San Diego Convention Center. The local venue is now in competition with centers in Anaheim and Los Angeles to host the gathering in 2013 to at least 2015.
Comic-Con organizers had said in June that they were looking to announce their choice before the start of this year’s event. David Glanzer, Comic-Con’s director of marketing and public relations, said just prior to the opening that organizers decided to focus solely on the mammoth task of staging the current show.
“We’re so swamped with just running this thing now, we’ve decided to just sit down after the show is over and look closely at these proposals again,” Glanzer said.
Glanzer said the same issues considered from the start of the site selection process still are in play, including exhibit space, transportation and hotel room availability and pricing. All three cities have submitted and revised proposals several times during the past few months.
Steven Johnson, spokesman for the San Diego Convention Center Corp., which operates the facility, said convention officials remain confident that local proposals will prevail and the city will be able to retain the event.
But Orange County, which has a larger convention center, thinks it has a good shot at the fan fest.
“We have been in discussion with the San Diego Comic-Con for many years,” said Mindy Abel, senior vice president of convention sales for the Anaheim/Orange County Visitor and Convention Bureau, earlier this year. “They have grown so much in the past few years that our size is part of the conversation this time around.”
In May, Johnson said San Diego authorities beefed up their convention proposal by offering Comic-Con $100,000 per year for five years—2011 through 2015—to help it defray the costs of shuttling visitors between convention events held at various downtown locations. That offer applies only if it signs on to stay in San Diego through 2015.
The city’s proposal also includes a doubling of available hotel rooms countywide earmarked for Comic-Con participants, from 7,000 to 14,000, during the four days of the convention.
The bid to retain Comic-Con comes as the convention center also is in the midst of designing a proposed $750 million expansion of the facility, to add exhibit space and other amenities.
Just before the start of this year’s event, Jim Durbin, general manager of the San Diego Marriott Gaslamp Quarter and president of the San Diego Hotel-Motel Association, said he is optimistic that convention organizers will decide to stay in their longtime San Diego home.
Though figures have not been announced, Durbin said the majority of local hotels have submitted competitive booking terms, including room rates and number of rooms to be set aside, to cover the period of at least 2013 to 2015, as part of the city’s overall proposal to convention organizers.
Durbin said the event has an impact on the local hospitality industry that rivals a Super Bowl, and local amenities, particularly in the downtown blocks surrounding the convention center near the Gaslamp Quarter, have provided a good complement to the convention’s own offerings.
“In terms of the concentration of hotels in one area, you’re not going to get that neighborhood feel in those other cities,” he said.
Anaheim’s Abel disagrees and touts the conventions center’s access to Disneyland parks, Downtown Disney, Angel Stadium and a wide range of hotels—in addition to an already expanded convention center—as a draw to Comic-Con.
The Anaheim Convention Center already hosts a number of fan fests, including BlizzCon, the annual show put on by Irvine-based online game developer Blizzard Entertainment Inc., part of Santa Monica’s Activision Blizzard Inc., itself a unit of France’s Vivendi SA.
Economic Impact
The Southern California cities are fighting over a big prize.
Johnson said a study commissioned by the convention center corporation and conducted by CIC Research Inc., which has not yet been released in its entirety, concluded that based on spending by Comic-Con participants at the most recent events, the total regional economic impact of the event is now estimated at $163 million.
Johnson said that number is based on researchers’ interviews with 900 attendees at the 2008 Comic-Con, combined with existing regional data on visitor spending throughout the year.
Researchers found that 57% of the 134,000 who attended Comic-Con and related events in 2008 stayed in hotels, with an average stay of four nights.
Those visitors accounted for 126,000 room nights, generating $25 million in hotel sales and $3 million in taxes for the city—including $2.6 million in transient occupancy taxes and about $500,000 that went to the city’s designated tourism district.
There were also sales taxes generated, though exact figures are not yet available, Johnson said.
Extrapolating from prior visitor spending trends, researchers estimated Comic-Con spurs $67.8 million in direct spending by convention-goers. The remaining factors, taking the total impact to the $163 million figure, include ripple spending by visitors and locals during the four days of the convention, generated by activities surrounding the event.
The study found that Comic-Con in 2008 filled 30,000 of San Diego County’s 53,000 available hotel rooms during the four days.
Hirsch is a staff reporter with the San Diego Business Journal, where this story first appeared.
