Will a fourth day ever be added to Pax East?

TofuMilk

With how fast the three day badges went this year, do you ever think Penny Arcade with open up a forth day in Boston? I know they have tried to help stop scalping in the past. But they're are still a lot of fans that can't go to Pax, because of how fast badges sell out. I know Seattle got a fourth day, but that is only because the size of the venue is smaller then Boston. What other things could be done, to help with ticket sales?

zerzhul

East still doesn't sell out nearly as fast as PAX Prime, so I'm not sure that's an accurate measurement for determining a 4th day. The BCEC is in the process of expanding, and that will likely help. There's no way to know whether or not a 4th day will be added though until they tell us "hey look what we're doing!"

TofuMilk

Do you know, how fast PAX Prime sells out compared To PAX East? My understanding is that PAX East three days badges, sold out in half hour.

PAX seems like it is just getting bigger and bigger every year. There were a couple people in my program that wanted to go to PAX, but had no idea what Penny Arcade even was. So I guess Penny Arcade was right, when saying that PAX is becoming it's own thing out right. I guess if they're done expanding, the convention to four PAX's a year. Then I guess we will have to hope that maybe Fan generated events can fill that gap.

I guess once November hits, you better be checking Twitter hourly if you want a three day badge.

zerzhul

3 day badges are not an effective measure of telling how fast the pax sells out because the 3-day percentage is likely very small. Here we are almost a week after pax east went on sale and fri/sun are still available. 100% of prime badges, all 4 days, sold out within 1.5 hours, to contrast.

Some of that is because East has higher capacity than prime. Most of it is due to the extreme popularity of prime.

Knight_

zerzhul wrote: »

3 day badges are not an effective measure of telling how fast the pax sells out because the 3-day percentage is likely very small. Here we are almost a week after pax east went on sale and fri/sun are still available. 100% of prime badges, all 4 days, sold out within 1.5 hours, to contrast.

Some of that is because East has higher capacity than prime. Most of it is due to the extreme popularity of prime.

South is also like 5 weeks before East. In theory that'd push demand down as well.

zerzhul

6 weeks actually, to the day.

TofuMilk

Thanks for the prospective, I guess I was only looking at this from one side. (That being mine)

PedroAsani

The big thing that allows a 4th day to be viable at Prime is Labor Day. In order for East to get a 4th day, either the Monday or the Friday needs to be a National Holiday.

(Why the Friday? Because then they could in theory have Thursday as the first day. Currently Friday is kind of the "soft opening" since most people have to work or go to school. If Friday was a Holiday then they could move to have Thursday as the "soft opening" day.)

Currently the closest thing in the calendar is only a State Holiday, March 17th 2015. There is also the national observance of St. Patricks Day, which is a good excuse to stick around for a week after PAX East but schools and work are still operating (probably less so the following day.)

It's difficult to see how you could shuffle things around and get 4 days in the same way that Prime has. I think that it's more likely that the convention centres will get bigger rather than having extra days added.

UNHMAN

If PA ever decides to expand East into a 4day convention it would cause a major scheduling issue. Prime's fourth day works since it's Labor Day and there are no "Massive Events" taking place. With East being in March or April every year they have to try to schedule between GDC, Easter and the Boston Marathon. And trying to find a week that works for the BCEC. We all saw the Security issues with getting into East now imagine that plus Marathon Monday mixed in. Unless they found another week or month to do it a 4 day East is not possible. There are just too many events in and around Boston during that time of the year.

NickTheNewbie

zerzhul wrote: »

3 day badges are not an effective measure of telling how fast the pax sells out because the 3-day percentage is likely very small. Here we are almost a week after pax east went on sale and fri/sun are still available.

#PopularEventProblems

hsu

The 3 day passes should not be discounted so much.
They are just absurdly discounted right now, which is why they sell out so quickly.
3 days should cost like 2.75 days, a small enough discount that people who buy a 3 day pass feel obligated to go all 3 days.
Also, the Saturday day pass should cost a little more than the Friday or Sunday pass, like say $10 more.

I agree with Khoo in that he should never charge the true price of PAX tickets, as they'd go for like $100+/day if they were priced true, but making people pause a bit, before buying 3 day passes or Saturday tickets would smooth out the crowds better.

PedroAsani

hsu wrote: »

The 3 day passes should not be discounted so much.
They are just absurdly discounted right now, which is why they sell out so quickly.
3 days should cost like 2.75 days, a small enough discount that people who buy a 3 day pass feel obligated to go all 3 days.
Also, the Saturday day pass should cost a little more than the Friday or Sunday pass, like say $10 more.

I agree with Khoo in that he should never charge the true price of PAX tickets, as they'd go for like $100+/day if they were priced true, but making people pause a bit, before buying 3 day passes or Saturday tickets would smooth out the crowds better.

I think there should be an option to combine single day badges into the 3 or 4 day badge when you buy them.

pelicanflip

hsu wrote: »

The 3 day passes should not be discounted so much.
They are just absurdly discounted right now, which is why they sell out so quickly.
3 days should cost like 2.75 days, a small enough discount that people who buy a 3 day pass feel obligated to go all 3 days.
Also, the Saturday day pass should cost a little more than the Friday or Sunday pass, like say $10 more.

I agree with Khoo in that he should never charge the true price of PAX tickets, as they'd go for like $100+/day if they were priced true, but making people pause a bit, before buying 3 day passes or Saturday tickets would smooth out the crowds better.

Don't kid yourself.

The 3 Day badges could cost the same amount as three single day badges added up together.

They would still sell out just as fast, and there would still be people upset. The fact of the matter is: there are more fans/people who want to go to PAX than there are 3-Day badges available.

YoungFrey

pelicanflip wrote: »

hsu wrote: »

The 3 day passes should not be discounted so much.
They are just absurdly discounted right now, which is why they sell out so quickly.
3 days should cost like 2.75 days, a small enough discount that people who buy a 3 day pass feel obligated to go all 3 days.
Also, the Saturday day pass should cost a little more than the Friday or Sunday pass, like say $10 more.

I agree with Khoo in that he should never charge the true price of PAX tickets, as they'd go for like $100+/day if they were priced true, but making people pause a bit, before buying 3 day passes or Saturday tickets would smooth out the crowds better.

Don't kid yourself.

The 3 Day badges could cost the same amount as three single day badges added up together.

They would still sell out just as fast, and there would still be people upset. The fact of the matter is: there are more fans/people who want to go to PAX than there are 3-Day badges available.

I think he's talking about the all the tickets, not just all-days ones being priced at market value. Meaning if PAX tickets were priced what the market would bear, people who only needed 2 days would think twice about paying an extra $100-$200 for a 3-day versus just what they actually needed. And they wouldn't sell out as fast because it's no secret that tickets are currently priced way under the demand curve.

flashe

My bank account hopes not, but the gamer in me can only hope one day.

DaveRH

I think PAX South has greatly reduced the pressure for PAX East tickets, so that will likely lower the chances of a fourth day. Even prior to PAX South, East has never held a candle to the demand of Prime.

East 2014 tickets completely sold out in 15 days, East 2015 tickets took 37 days to sell out completely.

Comparing that to PAX Prime... 2013 Prime sold out completely in 6 hours, and 2014 Prime sold out completely in less than an hour and a half. 2014 Prime was also the first year we saw attempted theft of badges from around the necks of attendees. I'm a bit concerned about this year to be honest.

ltgrunt

Three PAX events seems to be the ideal number for North America. Adding South relieved enough of the demand from East that both took a while to completely sell out. I wouldn't be surprised if Prime 2015 were affected. Adding a fourth PAX to North America doesn't seem necessary at this point. I don't expect another event to be added anytime soon, but I would find it easier to believe they would place one in Europe before adding a fourth one to NA.

Louis_RSN

I just want PAX everyday.

DaveRH

Apparently Mike wanted PAX-Land, but Khoo kiboshed the idea of a PAX Theme Park.

Headhunter

As mentioned by a few others, I'm hoping for an additional 4th day by the time the new hotels are built.

DaveRH wrote: »

East 2014 tickets completely sold out in 15 days, East 2015 tickets took 37 days to sell out completely.

Comparing that to PAX Prime... 2013 Prime sold out completely in 6 hours, and 2014 Prime sold out completely in less than an hour and a half. 2014 Prime was also the first year we saw attempted theft of badges from around the necks of attendees. I'm a bit concerned about this year to be honest.

Weren't the weekend passes for East 2015 still gone within a few hours? It's not as frenetic as Prime, but they still move really fast.

Sterica

If you want to attend all three days, East isn't much different than Prime.

DaveRH

Weekend passes for pretty much any pax sell out almost immediately (I think south lasted a little while, but that won't happen next year most likely). That's been happening since they reduced the number of full passes significantly a few years back.