Jan 29 2009
AnimeCons.com’s Official “Looking Back on the Anime Conventions of 2008″ Report
AnimeCons.com is a website dedicated to, well, anime conventions. For the past couple years, they’ve put out a yearly report on anime cons, and they’ve just published their 2008 article on the site. The report is an interesting read, especially for those who have attended a lot of cons of varying sizes and in various parts of the country. It analyzes everything from attendance numbers, to cancellations and drama. For example, apparently Otakon had a problem with fraudulent memberships being sold by a former staff member this past year.
It probably surprises very few that the largest North American anime convention in 2008 was Anime Expo, which takes place in Los Angeles in the summer. It’s estimated that approximately 43,000 people were in attendance. The next largest was Otakon, which had approximately 26,400 people attending. That’s quite a gap between the top two, and the gap between #1 and #10 is downright staggering.
The rest of the conventions on AnimeCons.com’s top 10 list for attendance (North American only) were: New York Anime Festival (18,399), A-Kon (15,000 estimated), Sakura-Con (13,600 estimated), Anime Boston (14,339), Anime Central (13,900 estimated), Anime North (13,300), FanimeCon (13,000 estimated) and Anime Weekend Atlanta (11,101). The report breaks down the attendance numbers for each con, and compares them to last year’s numbers.
You can read the entire report by clicking here. You may also want to take a look at the 2007 report, which has an interesting look at some of the attendance caps that were actually put into place that year.
Although I have not seen any similar reports on sci-fi/fantasy/comic conventions, it’s nice that we have this kind of information for anime conventions at least. Thanks to AnimeCons.com for putting this together for the rest of us to enjoy.
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