Comic-Con opens up about ticketing hassles

David Glanzer, in the La Mesa office of Comic-Con International, has been the longtime spokesman for the annual convention.
David Glanzer, in the La Mesa office of Comic-Con International, has been the longtime spokesman for the annual convention. — Nelvin C. Cepeda

Q: You recently held your WonderCon event at the Anaheim Convention Center instead of San Francisco’s Moscone Center as you normally do because of construction going on there. Anaheim had been in competition with San Diego to host future Comic-Con conventions. Did your experience in Orange County make you think more about relocating the Con there after 2015?

A: We were so focused on making WonderCon the best possible show, we weren’t really looking at this as ‘Oh, how would Comic-Con work here?’ It really was because we didn’t have dates at Moscone. WonderCon is really a Bay Area show.

Q: If San Diego does indeed expand its center, is it likely Comic-Con will remain here in the future?

A: If the expansion happens, I can’t think of a reason why we would move. I take my hats off to the Convention Center, local hotels and Mayor (Jerry) Sanders for rolling up their sleeves to make the best of a really challenging situation. And it’s not just that the current center can’t handle these mega conventions, but it’s hard handling multiple conventions. When we were in Anaheim, there was a national cheerleading competition and volleyball competition all at the same time as WonderCon, and we didn’t bump into each other.

Q: We need to talk about the process for purchasing badges. Much was made of last year’s aborted efforts, and while things went more smoothly this time around, there were still problems with people connecting to links that wouldn’t open. Why the problems?

A: It’s difficult to say that we didn’t accomplish our task. Could it have gone more smoothly? Yes, it could, but when you have an event that’s so incredibly popular and so many people bombarding the system at once, the possibility of there being an issue escalates, especially when you don’t know what that demand is. We did our resale, and that was done in less than half an hour.


Q: Can you explain why requiring people to register first for a member ID helps prevent scalping of badges?

A: It helps tremendously. If you’re a scalper, you’d buy however many badges you could, and now you have to have their name and member ID if you want to buy it for someone else. It’s more cumbersome but now less easy to sell badges at a higher value. We get a lot of suggestions, and there’s no suggestion that doesn’t deserve merit. Is this the way it will be done now and forever? I couldn’t say whether it will always be this way.

Q: Would you consider going with a larger company like Ticketmaster that is used to handling hugely popular events?

A: It doesn’t mean we haven’t looked at a multitude of solutions to an issue or that we haven’t negotiated with other companies. We’ve looked at different companies, but that doesn’t mean they all want to work with us.


