I hope the Chargers brand would stay in SD like the Browns did with Cleveland.

Briggs doesn't have much credibility left. Let's not forget, on election night when Spanos got it handed to him, so did Briggs. In fact, I believe his measure got less votes than the Charger's measure did. I wish he'd move to LA, too.

The Mayor is proposing a hotel tax increase to pay for a convention center expansion. I'm not sure if he means contiguous or not, but I'm hoping we can get the current convention center expanded and KEEP COMIC CON here for good!

I thought the contiguous expansion already got shot down?

I keep reading contradictory things. I think it might still have a chance with the hotel tax, but would require a vote.

I wouldn't worry about Comic-Con leaving. I work with them every year and no one from that office has mentioned the possibility of moving to LA or Anaheim (some have even mocked it as a conspiracy theory). The convention center mainly wants to expand to host multiple shows at the same time. For example, when my agency ran Schwab Impact (a little over 7000 attendees), we only utilized 3/5 of the available space. The convention center struggled to rent out the remainder and I think they ended up booking some mini-job fair. 100,000+ conventions are very rare and generally like to stick to the same cities. SF has Dreamforce, Vegas has SEMA and CES, and we have Comic-Con. It's extremely unlikely that any of those will go anywhere else in the near future.

comicon can't move to LA for at least 5 years, either with the inglewood stadium or the convention center expansion. after that though, who knows. LA has far better international connections (LAX and the freeway system) and so many of the attendees are from LA anyway. it's a real risk and SD should really keep on top of it. the best way is to keep going with everything planned, on the waterfront and downtown, that improves san diego's core and continues the process toward making it a walkable, vibrant area, the sort of area that people are pleased they get to visit every year.

edit: also want to say that i think it fucking sucks that the football team is headed up to los angeles. here in SF, we lost the football team to a city about 40 miles south, what's basically san jose. you feel the void here in the city, there's very very little support for the team, even if they're still use our name for legacy and promotional reasons. i don't really care, personally, but i can understand how it could make a community feel less 'common.'

^I thought the next possible/realistic move for ComicCon was Anaheim, not LA.

LOL that's what San Diego hoped for about the chargers, to not leave, but look what happened. People for the longest, thought NFL was never gonna move any team to LA, but look what happened. Anything is possible my friend don't overlook it.

Too much attention is being given to Comic Con when in the grand scheme of things it's just one convention. The much greater danger is that LA and OC are spending billions on attractions, hotels, and transportation infrastructure and are both poised to see explosive growth in tourism over the next few years. SD will have to find a way to keep up or risk being left behind.

I said near future. 10 years from now the Comic-Con staff could be completely different and management might have other ideas. But what do I know? They've only been one of my biggest clients since 2010. ;) That can be verified by several forumers, by the way.

I disagree with you about Comic Con. It's way more than "just one convention", it's the largest pop culture event in the world and has a solid national and international reputation. I do agree with you about SD falling behind, though. Things don't look good. LA is quickly solving their transportation problems and building light rail like crazy, meanwhile SD, with our incompetent SANDAG planning agency, seem to take decades to get even small projects done. This past November, LA voters passed a transit tax that ensures their large projects will continue to be funded. SD rejected ours, so nobody knows where the money will come from for transit here. Has the blue line to UCSD even broken ground yet? Honestly, my guess is that if the blue line does get built we are unlikely to see another major trolley line in the next 20-50 years. Nope, that's not a typo. Look at SANDAG's long range plan, it's concentrating on freeways and "rapid busses" and the one trolley line proposed (purple line) has no funding.

So what? Comic book geeks have little income. How does the economic impact of Comic Con really compare to, say, 2-3 big doctor/lawyer conventions?

Meanwhile, SeaWorld (San Diego's most popular attraction) has seen attendance drop by over 20% even while Disney and Universal are spending billions to expand their parks.

You're probably right. That's definitely the case in San Francisco.

The price tag for an NFL franchise and stadium won't change. If San Diego really wants a team, it's going to have to pay this price at some point...

A doctor/lawyer convention doesn't have the same media attention as Comic Con. And you are stereo-typing the convention goers. A lot of them are in the entertainment industry or even unrelated industries who do have money to spend.

You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. :haha:

I think you're seriously overestimating the value of that little bit of media exposure.

Oh really?

Let's look at a recent report
https://www.visitsandiego.com/sites/...ecast_2016.pdf

According to their figures, the top 5 conventions by economic impact and attendance were:

1. SDCC, $140.0 miillion/130,000
2. Society for Neuroscience, $109.6 million/32,000
3. Digestive Disease Week, $62.8 million/20,000
4. American Society of Hermatology, $61.8 million/19,000
5. American Chemical Society, $60.5 million/19,000

SDCC's attendance was 4 times that of the #2 convention, yet the economic impact was only 28% greater! In fact, SDCC's attendance was 44% more than #2-5 put together (90,000), but its total economic impact was less than half of their $294.7 million combined total.

Yeah, folks really drink the Kool-Aid around here when it comes to SDCC. I'm voting against any public funds that will expand convention center, they can raise their own money.

What percentage of Comic Con visitors are from Southern California? I'm just an outsider popping into the discussion, but it seems like an event that's partially about being a global event but a large percentage of attendees are local. The popular culture influence point is good, and the lower spending point is also good.

My city, Seattle, can't host events anywhere near that big. We're expanding our convention center but the target will still be 5,000 high-spending doctors, though locally-focused events where people show up for half a day vs. the whole duration can still draw multiples of that. While some Comic Con (and local versions) attendees have plenty of money, the average skews lower than doctor groups, even without including the teenage participants.

As for losing the Chargers, welcome to the club. After we lost the NBA I found that a sport I had no stake in was pretty quickly just uninteresting. That plus the NFL's incessant commercials would make me drop it like a hot potato (commercials, kickoff, commercials, three plays, commercials, four plays, two minute warning commercials, guy gets injured commercials, misc. no reason except commercials commercials...). It takes two switch-to channels to watch anything these days. Without the NFL you can do something more useful with your time.

I liked the downtown stadium concept, which didn't take too much land and had other uses integrated. But San Diego has great residential demand and I bet you can fill it with housing and other uses that will be more productive 98% of the time.