The San Diego Comic-Con International (SDCC) has finished for another year. 130,000 attendees will have passed through the front doors of the festival each day over the four-day event, filling the San Diego Convention Center to capacity. The event has evolved beyond its comic book convention roots to encompass pop culture more broadly and is without question the biggest and most buzzed about fan convention in the world. Each year now, the SDCC reaches capacity – but it could and should be bigger. They need to take the SDCC online.
Each year entertainment journalists from online and traditional media outlets descend upon Comic-Con to report on the many announcements, screenings, and events that take place during the convention. It is almost expected that panel events will offer major announcements nowadays. News of a Superman/Batman movie dominated SDCC news for a couple of hours before Marvel announced the direction of their new Avengers movie Avengers: Age of Ultron. Avengers director Joss Whedon screened his new tv pilot Marvels Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. And then there was promotion of a bunch of new and returning TV series. Amid the multitude of TV cast/showrunner panels, there were a number of displays and other promotional fare, with a 3D interactive hologram of James Spader promoting his new series The Blacklist.
And that doesn’t even scratch the surface of events/attractions at SDCC, with further niche subjects relating to comic books, video games, anime, card & board games, fantasy books, and more on offer.
These are content rich events and attractions that have significant global interest. Why not take the SDCC to the next obvious level and offer this content online? It makes perfect sense to offer a
There’s always one of these guys at a comic convention.
subscription to the service and enable fans worldwide to watch the full breadth of panels live as they happen, access video of past panels, and film additional content that takes in the full scope of the convention.
Attendance at the SDCC will not suffer. It’s the Superbowl of fan conventions and, like the Superbowl itself, fans will still prefer to be at the event itself rather than watch it online.
It’s also worth noting that increasing the scope of SDCC falls well within the charter and intent of the annual event. Their Mission Statement: Comic-Con International: San Diego is a nonprofit educational corporation dedicated to creating awareness of, and appreciation for, comics and related popular artforms, primarily through the presentation of conventions and events that celebrate the historic and ongoing contribution of comics to art and culture.
In this day and age of connected TV’s, OTT services, YouTube, and the like, it makes absolutely no sense with the intense fan interest in SDCC to have engagement limited to following journo’s tweets and live blogs to get access to events like this.
Why isn’t Comic-Con on my television?