Next week, Comic-Con International is returning to San Diego and celebrating its 50th anniversary in the city. But ahead of Comic-Con 2019, the con organizers and the city have announced a new deal that will keep the event in San Diego for at least the next five years.
Via The San Diego Union-Tribune, the new deal is a three year extension of the previous contract. Because the earlier deal wasn’t set to expire until 2021, this means the newest contract will run through 2024. However, the issues facing Comic-Con and San Diego are far from over. For the last few years, attendance has been capped at 135,000 because the San Diego Convention Center can’t accommodate a larger crowd. Comic-Con could easily exceed those attendance numbers if the facility was larger.
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Los Angeles, Anaheim, and Las Vegas have previously shown interest in luring Comic-Con away from San Diego. And it may still take an expansion of the convention center to keep Comic-Con in the long run. As noted by the Union-Tribune, San Diego voters will get the chance to weigh in on a proposal to pay for the convention center expansion through a hotel tax. That ballot imitative will go before the voters in March 2020.
Comic-Con International will have its Preview Night on Wednesday, July 17 and run through Sunday, July 21.
Are you happy to hear that Comic-Con is staying in San Diego for the next half decade? Let us know in the comment section below!
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