30 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ SEPTEMBER 9, 2019
Attendees enter the NYCC 2018 exhibition floor.ment events aimed at librarians will once again be held at New
York Public Library.New Hours, Venues, Ticket Programs
NYCC’s total tickets inventory is smaller than it has been in
years past, says event director Kristina Rogers. The shrinkage,
she notes, is due in part to ReedPop’s reintroduction of four-day
passes, which were discontinued in 2017. She says that fan
demand was high for the four-day offering.
ReedPop has also partnered with San Francisco–based Lyte
to introduce a ticket exchange program that allows badge
resales. In the past, ReedPop did not allow badge holders to
resell, assigning each badge holder a unique, nontransferrable
ID as a means to mitigate scalping, which can cause badge
prices to skyrocket. This year, however, Lyte was of interest to
ReedPop, because its badge reselling program is able to keep
ticket sales at fair prices, Rogers says. Lyte’s program was
piloted at Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle earlier this year.
“It does limit those crazy prices on third-party resellers,”New York Comic
Con Reinvents
Itself (Again)
In its annual update, the show will
feature new hours and introduce a
ticket exchange and a different venue
for Anime Fest @ NYCCBy Rich ShiveneR
M
uch like popular culture itself, the New York
Comic Con, which will be held Thursday–
Sunday, October 3–6, at the Javits Center in
New York City, must continually reinvent
itself in order to serve the fans, creators, and
publishers that return to the giant pop culture show each year.
According to ReedPop, which organizes NYCC, this year will
be no different. The 2019 show will again make use of a number
of surrounding locations, such as Hudson
Mercantile, Madison Square Garden, and
the New York Public Library’s historic
building on Fifth Avenue. ReedPop says it
expects to sell about 200,000 NYCC tickets
(last year the show sold more than 230,000
tickets), noting that most of that number
had already been sold as of late August.
Standout developments include changes
to ReedPop’s ticketing for the show, an
extension of NYCC hours, and the reloca-
tion of Anime Fest @ NYCC, a ReedPop-
organized Asian pop culture festival held
concurrently with NYCC, from Pier 94
(where its inaugural show was held last
year) to Hudson Mercantile, an event space
much closer to the Javits Center.
Additionally, comics and graphic novel
programming and professional develop-
continued on p. 32photoby
jodyculkin