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NEWS: Anime Expo 2010 Reports 105,000+ Turnstile Attendance




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Michi
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Joined: 22 Feb 2004
Posts: 741
Location: Los Angeles, CA
PostPosted: Wed Jul 14, 2010 1:39 am Reply with quote
What is the point of counting turnstile attendance? Is it just to have impressive big numbers, or is there really something to be seen there? Unique attendees says a lot more to me, unless they say exactly how many people attended, say, for 4 days versus just one.
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Sailor S





PostPosted: Wed Jul 14, 2010 1:46 am Reply with quote
I dunno either. They claim that a lot of conventions, like Comiket, use turnstile in their figures (which they very well may, I don't have anything to confirm nor deny such claims) so they use it too. Seems like a lot of fuzzy math to me to make yourself sound bigger than you are. Basically it's there to fool people who weren't there and don't know any better. Anyone that was there could tell right away that there wasn't anywhere close to 100,000 people there. I'd be shocked to find out that they had 50,000 unique attendees. But, unless they drop the smoke and mirrors and reveal honest numbers, we'll never know what the unique attendance was. And given how much they're defending using turnstile on their forums, I doubt they'll reveal the unique. At least none too soon.
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bayoab



Joined: 06 Oct 2004
Posts: 831
PostPosted: Wed Jul 14, 2010 4:55 am Reply with quote
Michi wrote:
What is the point of counting turnstile attendance? Is it just to have impressive big numbers, or is there really something to be seen there? Unique attendees says a lot more to me, unless they say exactly how many people attended, say, for 4 days versus just one.
It's to make the con look bigger than it actually is. The average person will see "100000" but they don't see the "turnstile" or don't get the difference between turnstile and warm body count/badges sold. The reason for this is there was likely little to no growth (or maybe even a drop) in the uniques if you compare it year over year or just do some rough estimated calculations. (Take the turnstile and divide by the average number of days per person, which is likely ~2.)

Sailor S wrote:
I dunno either. They claim that a lot of conventions, like Comiket, use turnstile in their figures (which they very well may, I don't have anything to confirm nor deny such claims) so they use it too. Seems like a lot of fuzzy math to me to make yourself sound bigger than you are.

They use that for Comiket and the like because they don't actually track unique "badges". They also have people with counters standing at the doors. AX is just counting # of badge days x # of people with that badges which is very fuzzy math. This is as you say...

Quote:
Basically it's there to fool people who weren't there and don't know any better. [...] But, unless they drop the smoke and mirrors ...
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pepper_gray



Joined: 12 Jan 2010
Posts: 12
PostPosted: Wed Jul 14, 2010 8:24 am Reply with quote
I think it's impossible for them to have real numbers anyway because a lot of people decided not to pay for the show. So many fans decided to "ghost" the con (walk in without badges) and I watched a six foot tall man try to get on my shuttle on Sunday with a child badge marked "Melissa". The staff did an impressive job of trying to stop them (I watched them turn three kids away from the upstairs hallway checkpoint on Saturday right in front of me) but with crowds like those it's impossible to catch 'em all.

I've never seen the level of counterfeiting of badges/attempts to sneak in that I've seen at cons so far this year. I know the problem has always existed but it's been blown up to ridiculous proportions.

Just like the manga and anime publishers, guys, if a con can't break even and make seed money for the next year you won't have a con anymore, and then everyone will complain that cons are dying.

In other news, I wouldn't be surprised if they hit 40,000+ people on Saturday. The con was spread out over about a mile with large pockets of activity in the dealers' room, in each of the Convention Center lobbies, and in Nokia Plaza/the Nokia Theater.

Denny's certainly didn't look like they were hurting for business Cool
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TatsuGero23



Joined: 18 Nov 2008
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Location: Sniper Island, USA (It's in your heart!)
PostPosted: Wed Jul 14, 2010 8:29 am Reply with quote
It does have other values too. It lets the organizer know if more people came on a particular day and why that may be. Or if less people came on a particular day, then what was the reason for that. Yes, big numbers look impressive but it helps them plan for future events since they see what draws in a crowd or not. It also tells them that a percentage of those 40000 came back the next day or chose a specific day for "X" reason and to insure that happens again next year, they do the same and hopefully improve on it.
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diligent sesame



Joined: 29 Jun 2009
Posts: 57
PostPosted: Wed Jul 14, 2010 9:19 pm Reply with quote
pepper_gray wrote:

Denny's certainly didn't look like they were hurting for business Cool

Omg haha I was so amused everytime I walked/rode past Denny's. IHOP was pretty impressive too.
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