Variety paints a pretty bleak picture of the success of Comic-Con@Home 2020, the online-only event that was spun up in response to the actual convention being cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic that has been sweeping the globe. According to their provided statistics, vieweships for panels on YouTube were sparse and tweets pertaining to panels shown during the convention were way down from last year. With major players such as Lucasfilm, Marvel Studios, Warner Bros., and DC Films electing not to partake in the event in terms of showcasing new movies/TV shows, the data posted by Variety does not bode well for the future of Comic-Con@Home unless these heavyweight entertainment companies are part of the programming.
If a fan convention is held on the internet and no one’s there to talk about it, does it make any noise?
That was the overwhelming experience with Comic-Con@Home, the virtual fan convention that ran from July 22-26. It was meant to replace San Diego Comic-Con, the massive annual fan gathering that was forced to cancel due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite A-list panels for “The Walking Dead,” the Star Trek Universe, and two Keanu Reeves movies, Comic-Con@Home cast a pale shadow in comparison to Comic-Con of recent years — perhaps the starkest example yet of what we lose when we lose the live experience.
According to data from social media analytics firm ListenFirst, tweets that mentioned Comic-Con@Home were down 95% from 2019’s live convention — just 93,681 tweets over the five-day event, against 1,719,000 tweets in 2019. Tweets about the top 10 TV events were similarly down 93%, and tweets about the top 5 movie panels were down a shocking 99%.
Views on YouTube, which hosted the vast majority of Comic-Con’s panels, were scarcely better. Average views for Thursday, which have had the longest period for people to watch them, are hovering around 15,000 per panel.
