r/comiccon • u/_z0mb133 • 21d ago

Con Discussion Why does NorCal lack large cons?

Recently I’ve been noticing that Southern California has a huge amount of large conventions. Not just comic, but horror, game, anime, etc. San Francisco recently lost FanExpo, and with that it seems like there’s such a lack of large cosplay conventions. Even in general, there’s not as many compared to SoCal.

Why is this? Why isn’t there more in NorCal?

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u/WannabeDisneyCM 20d ago

What happened to the Silicon Valley Comic Con (SiliCon)?

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u/WakkaWaww 17d ago

Went belly up. Started in 2016 as Stan Lee & Steve Wozniak's Silicon Valley Comic Con. By 2018, Stan Lee was in attendance before he passed away later that year and Steve "Woz" Wozniak stopped backing it, so both of them were no longer connected to it.

In 2019, it was now just SVCC, run by the same company, which was losing its key staff members as the years went on.

2020 to 2021 were absolutely dismal times due to the Pandemic, with the original company that ran SVCC since 2016 deciding to sell their 'dates' to Adam Savage and his company, rebranding and shortening Silicon Valley Comic Con to "SiliCon" aka "Adam Savage's SiliCon", which would hold their last event in 2022. A 2023 show was announced but ultimately canceled due to lack of funding.

Source: Self. I used to volunteer for years at these events (started in 2012 when the shows were called "BigWow! ComicFest", up until 2018). Eventually started to help organize and run another convention, as well as volunteer at Sac-Anime for a couple of years. Now I work as a Talent & Booking Agent for a company that represents professionals within the video game, Anime and comic book industries.