Attending events is getting more and more expensive
Game Conference Guide Insights - February 2024
Last year, there has been 321 events. It is impossible to attend every one of them. What is the golden rule? One per month? Three per year? Is that enough?
Priorities to attend events has changed since pandemic. I do hear voices saying you have to be more pickier, or you should focus only on the holy trinity: GDC, gamescom and your favourite event. Others are reporting increasing speaking engagements, some are saying they are staying on course and not limiting events activities, some are preaching to go off the beaten path and explore. Then you have those running on a tight budgets.
One of the best arguments I have heard was to measure the costs of attending an event to number of copies you have to sell to afford a trip to GDC for example.
There goes a lot of thinking into planning a trip; from securing flights to booking key meetings, from exploring out the surroundings to answering a question if you should by a ticket or just hang around the venue. Also, the goals differ from company to company, from team to team. There is no golden rule here.
Attending events can be intoxicating with so many new connections and familiar faces around. You can get your questions answered, you can bump into a new exciting opportunities, you can open the doors or burn a lot of connections and not get anything in return.
Why am I writing about this? I do want to revisit this topic and get to the bottom of why we are travelling to places we do not like, yet we do it every year like a clockwork.
Speaking about events, to attend one, you usually have to buy a ticket. And they are getting more expensive every year. How expensive? Let’s take a look.
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DATA COLLECTION METHOD
Collecting prices from various events is getting more complicated. There are no standardized categories nor types of tickets offering similar or same provisions. A standard ticket at one conference, is the most expensive business pass at the other.
With B2B events for professionals, I was looking at the most expensive one (being it called premium, premium plus, all access, or VIP) and for a Standard pass that covers most of what the event has to offer, including expo, access to lectures / sessions, and sometimes even the meeting system. In many cases, the lowest entry is marked as indie and the one with meeting system is called business, these were not tracked.
B2B events include academia grade summits as well and many big events offering separate industry programme like a summit or series of sessions with dedicated showcase paywalled for professionals only.
On B2C side, compared to the last year, I have started to distinguish between Daily and All Days Pass (or unlimited entry) plus the most expensive VIP package on top. For this reason, I couldn’t calculate the averages, as in 2022 I used a different data collection. B2C events includes festivals, big trade shows, and all the fan focused events like PAX, gamescom etc.
In both groups (B2B and B2C), physical events were prioritized; meaning if an event had a broadcast you could attend for free, but you had to buy in to see it in person and interact with attendees, the paid ticket was counted towards the averages. There were handful of exceptions, showcases like VGA or MIX were counted as true free events, even though they offered a limited number of tickets for on-site attendance.
Despite my efforts and sampling the prices multiple times during the year, I failed to capture price for 23 events out of 321 (7 %). From the total amount, 10 events were excluded as they were cancelled; 8 of them were targeting professionals, the rest was for general public.
All the currencies were transferred into USD by using Google currency exchange rate on 5th of February.
THE RESULTS
Let’s start with the B2C type of events. The prices unfortunately can’t be compared directly with 2022 due to different data collection. For a single daily ticket in 2023 you were paying on average $29 ($17 median), for all access it was $85 on average and $38 median and if you wanted to opt in for a VIP pass you were paying on average $119 or $74 median.
In 2023 you could attend B2B events with free admission. Thank God for trade missions and various local associations doing their incredible jobs to provide platform to newcomers and building the awareness for the industry. In total there were 75 truly free events (23% from the total number of events in 2023).
Out of those 33 were broadcasts, Steam festivals and umbrella events for game festivals in various cities. The rest (42) were industry events, various networking, pitching and festival like experiences, including those requiring registration (free) or direct invitation.
In 2023, you were paying for a single B2B pass on average $287 (50% increase compared to $190 in 2022), $150 median (40% increase compared to $107 in 2022). If you preferred VIP and top shelf experience, you paid on average $964 (a whopping 160% increase compared to $370 in 2022), $795 median (196% increase compared to $268 in 2022).
Many conferences introduced VIP passes last year and started to offer these for prices exceeding multiple times the price of a standard conference pass. Margins on these are way higher as on a single standard pass, so there is no wonder, they are being offered at majority of B2B events.
Now, if you decided to skip travel and join virtually, you paid on average $154 or $25 median for a single online pass. In 2022 I was not collecting ticket prices for a virtual entry.
When buying a ticket during early bird period, you were saving on average $82 or $50 median. From my previous experience, the biggest number of tickets sold is during the last 4-6 weeks leading up to the events itself, when the campaign is firing on all cylinders and the FOMO starts to kick in as well. During this period, the Regular or Late Bird tickets are usually offered.
Speaking about FOMO, if you decided to join GDC late, you are paying on average 7% more across all the tickets offered than in 2023.
Events are getting expensive every year. Did you change your events policy? Are you limiting the number of events you are visiting, or applying the same strategy as before? Let me know.
DATABASE UPDATE
Looking ahead the database has currently 136 events scheduled for 2024, 17 deadlines and 27 Showcases. The whole data set is being manually updated and I do periodically check new updates and cross-referencing events from previous years for new announcements not to miss anything. It is time consuming, but this way I can get (sometimes) ahead of the organizers themselves.
With GDC looming around the corner we might see some satellite showcases being broadcasted as well, Xbox and PlayStation did their first salvos with first Direct and State of Play. In general, the Showcases subpage is showing increased traffic whenever a big event is around the corner, obviously the peak period is the nonE3 week in June.
Check back often, as new entries are being added daily. And if you come across an event I have missed, feel free to ping me. Would love to learn about new events out there.
[Game Conference Guide is tracking games industry & game developers events, trade shows, festivals, conferences and events around the world.]
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Pavol Buday, curator @ GCG