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San Diego Convention Center Corporation Reviews San Diego Comic-Con’s Economic Impact

There’s a reason that San Diego is fighting to keep San Diego Comic-Con and Comic-Con International in its city: the convention brings not only thousands of attendees into the area, but it also brings with it money, jobs, and a huge tourism boost.

Late last year, the San Diego Workforce Partnership released their findings on San Diego Comic’s positive economic impact, and now, the San Diego Convention Center Corporation has done the same, with projections for 2015 regional impact by all of the conventions that the San Diego Convention Center hosts.

This year, the convention center will be home to 107 currently scheduled events, with the possibility of booking more in the months to come. Of those 107, San Diego Comic-Con is by far the biggest performer, estimated to have a regional impact of $135,900,000 this year — with over $80,000,000 of that being tied directly to attendee spending. The next biggest regional economic performer is Acc.15: American College of Cardiology Scientific Session, which is estimated at bringing in $65,900,000 to the region.

That $135,000,000 does come in just a little below the San Diego Workforce Partnership’s $160,000 – $180,000 economic impact estimation, but it’s still a huge boost for the city. It’s also possible that this study isn’t taking into account the few thousand people who flock to the city every year during the convention for other, offsite events, even without a Comic-Con badge.

Additionally, the study notes that San Diego Comic-Con also holds the largest convention hotel block. There are 59,228 nights in area hotels reserved by Comic-Con International for Comic-Con attendees, though as any of SDCC’s 130,000+ attendees will tell you, it’s still incredibly hard to snag many of those rooms. That number also doesn’t include non-convention center block hotel rooms (estimated to be around 30-40%), meaning that the actual number of nights spent in area hotel rooms by convention attendees is much higher.

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With SDCC’s current contract with the San Diego Convention Center only set through 2016, and recent setbacks in the proposed expansion plan, findings like this one are important for helping to prove to local city officials and to San Diego at large that Comic-Con is worth fighting for.

You can read the full study on the San Diego Convention Center’s site.

Are you surprised by any of this information? Let us know in the comments.

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