This weekend the first ever San Diego Comic-Con Malaga was held in Malaga, Spain. As a beautiful city on the Mediterranean with a lot of appeal to tourists, it seemed like a promising spot to bring the vibes of SDCC to Europe for the first time. That’s what has been promised many times since the show was announced last year as SDCC first ever officially licensed show in Europe.
Unfortunately reports on social media and in the Spanish press are calling the show everything from a “total disaster” to “an AliExpress version of Comic-Con.” And locals are calling it “Cola Con”: Spanish for “line con.”
The problem: first time showrunners seemed unprepared for what to actually do with the estimated 120,000 people who showed up (60,000 were expected.) Lines to get into the venue were hours long and set in broiling heat. Attendees were not allowed to bring in outside food and water, and Spaniards on social media were displeased by expensive American style con food like hot dogs and hamburgers.
https://x.com/TomosyGrapas/status/1972253875559428450
My first thought is that if you really want the SDCC experience, lines and overpriced food are part of it, but the many complains point to many first time mistakes.
There were some bright spots that you might find at a normal comic con: as the attendance shows, people were extremely pumped to go to a SDCC-type event in Spain; some news dropped at panels, a good number of celebrities showed, and Arnold Schwarzenegger – who lives nearby for part of the year – showed up on Sunday to get an award from Antonio Banderas.
But even this was touched by the controversy, as Banderas wrote on IG:
“It is a pleasure to give this well-deserved award to Arnold Schwarzenegger. One of the greatest legends of action cinema, although today the real heroes were the ones standing in line to enter the venue where Comic-Con is being held.”
It’s pretty rare to hear a major celebrity address con organization criticisms, but the controversy over SDCC-Malaga has spread to Spanish media in general, with some of the complaining videos we’ve seen on social media getting millions of views.
Beat pal Leonard Sultana (An Englishman at SDCC) was at Malaga and has posted many livestreams and wrap ups about the show – generally supporting the claims of disorganization. On one video he says the exhibit hall was way too small for the intended audience – artist alley was four rows – and the exhibit hall map shows the relative sizes of the areas. Hall M holds 3500 people so you can see the exhibit hall was not big enough to support the crowds if this is even remotely to scale.
The no outside food rule is one that many comic-cons have, but we’ve rarely seen it enforced, and bringing in outside water is considered a necessity. Both SDCC and NYCC allow outside food and beverages.
There’s also a lot of local politics involved in the show, with some of the criticism aimed at SDCC-Malaga’s tight ties with the local Andalusian government, as mentioned in this op-ed in El Pais, Spain’s largest daily newspaper. (Translation via Google.)
Everything went wrong from the very week it was announced: with no direct ties to the original event, an extremely generous subsidy from the Andalusian regional government, and no confirmed guests. A businessman bought the rights to use the brand, met with some politicians, and between one mushroom tapa and another they chatted about “that electronic ticketing business.” The organizing company was created less than a year ago, and tickets for the event went on sale May 15. The result, as we saw this past weekend: a total disaster.
An organization efficient only when it came to charging money. Imagine paying €55 (plus VAT) to attend a talk and not being able to get in, or having a QR code for a photo (at €90) and there being no QR scanners. You can eat more cheaply at an airport. There are many conventions of this kind in Spain, and all of them are better (I’ve been to almost a hundred) than this one where admission cost €50. Receiving €4.5 million in subsidies and putting together this fiasco is a disgrace.
Another news reports acknowledged the first time issues, with organizers promising to do better.
Moreno assured that access and queue management would improve in the following years. He said that the organisation is already working on this, planning “more space and surface area” for following years. The aim is to not only sell more tickets but to also allow attendees to move around the venue with more ease.
The president of the Junta attributed the long queues to the fact that “the forecasts were exceeded” this year. Initially, SDCCM was to reach a maximum of 60,000 attendees, but this figure more than doubled, exceeding 120,000 people. The original headquarters of Comic-Con (San Diego) confirmed the success of the Malaga event.
Honestly, you can’t just slap the words “San Diego Comic-Con” on anything and expect it to be the same. As with many “con disaster” stories, this sounds like over promising and under planning. Despite the travails, SDCC-Malaga has a three year to deal to put on the show, so there will be several more editions. However, fans expected better and the controversy has struck a nerve. OCU, Spain’s biggest consumer union has launched an inquiry into the show, and already has 200 complaints.
