-Anthony Beanes Director Wizard World is a comic book convention that travels from city to city bringing the likes of Stan Lee, Carre Fisher, and many other stars. Since the start of the Wizard World conventions, the question of how exactly can Wizard World finance these conventions does beg the question. Recently this information has been released. Newsarama is reporting that Wizard World working captial of $2,543,922 but with an accumulated deficit of $15,263,411. To help mitigate this problem, the company's newly-hired President/CEO John D. Matta and the board are beginning to seek outside funding through loans, equity investments, and cutting some operating costs. In order to fund operations past that date is dependent on management’s plans, which include the raising of capital through debt and/or equity markets with some additional funding from other traditional financing sources, including term notes, or the significant reduction of operating expenses until such time that funds provided by operations are sufficient to fund working capital requirements," reads Wizard World's 10-Q form. "There is no assurance that the Company’s projections and estimates are accurate. The Company is actively managing and controlling the Company’s cash outflows to mitigate these risks." Also, Wizard World is in a lawsuit with with former Chief Marketing Officer Stephen Shamus who is seeking $400,000 in unpaid salary and bonuses, $125,000 severance pay, stock options on 500,000 shares in the company, as well as an unspecified amount of commissions and interest. Authors note: Reading this news story, this does not bode well for the Wizard World Convention circut. I did question how exactly Wizard World was able to contunie running Wizard World. We see how exactly this will bode for the future of Wizard World, but its not looking good right now.
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-Anthony Beanes Director Last year Anime Expo debuted to their attendees Anisong World Matsuri, which was a concert event celebrating anime music. During this event, eight bands were performing at Anime Expo last year including:
This event was such a huge success, and was well received from attendees that Anime Expo has announced Anisong World Matsuri will indeed return for 2017. As far as who will be performing at next year's Anime Expo is yet to be announced. Also Prices for the tickets for the concert are also yet to be announced. This past year, fans were able to attend the concert only by purchasing tickets for the concert, and must have an Anime Expo badge. The badge had to be either a four day, and or a one day badge to attend the concert event. -Authors note I was rather surprised how Anime Expo was able to pull this event off, as well as the amount of bands to Anime Expo this past year. I only wonder how Anime Expo will be able to top this event for next year, since they are already set the bar so high for themselves. The other big question is the money this must of costs to bring the talent here, but with the recent VIP packages that Anime Expo has set up, this may help Anime Expo levitate the costs.
-Anthony Beanes Director Anime California has been through a rough start early in it's anime convention career, today didn't help its cause. Today on Anime California's social media, has announced that this year's Anime California has been cancelled. Good evening Everyone! While indeed this anime convention has had a rough start, its never a good sign when it cancels all together. Anime California will try to return again in 2017, and many fans will await it's return. Running anime conventions are never easy kids.
-Anthony Beanes Director Conventions don't tend to stay for long in San Francisco, and many hopeful were devastated when Wondercon moved to Anaheim, and never came back. Wondercon may not be coming back, but in it's place the CCI (Comic-Con International) are planning to make a new convention for San Francisco. Introducing SAM, Storytelling Across Media, comic book convention. “Our hope is that we can return to the Bay Area if not with WonderCon than perhaps with another convention,” said David Glanzer, CCI's Director of Marketing and Public Relations. “SAM, Storytelling Across Media, is our first foray in that direction.” While CCI is making a good effort to bring back a comic book convention, since Wondercon never came back, I feel like its been increasingly obvious that San Francisco is the place where conventions tend to move away from. If this indeed works out, then people in norcal will be happy to have a comic book convention back since the departure of Wondercon.
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