Comic-Con@Home tweets down 95% from 2019 live convention

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

San Diego Comic-Con made the difficult decision to cancel its annual event due to the COVID-19 pandemic and decided to go virtual in an attempt to maintain its presence in 2020. While this decision was done with the best of intentions, Comic-Con's social media footprint was down significantly from its 2019 live version.

Tweets for Comic-Con@Home were down 95% from last year's event when Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige brought down the house at Hall H with special announcement after special announcement. According to data from social media analytics firm ListenFirst, via "", "tweets that mentioned Comic-Con@Home were down 95% from 2019's live convention – just 93,681 tweets over the five-day event, against 1,719,000 tweets in 2019." The report goes on to add, "Tweets about the top TV events were similarly down 93%, and tweets about the top 5 movie panels were down a shocking 99%."

So how did this go so badly? Most people in North America are still at home with not a lot to do since a lot of establishments are still closed. This would lead one to believe that Comic-Con@Home would be a bigger success since those who couldn't normally score a pass for the live event would be able to get some of the experience by catching a different version for free at home. This could've been a success on some level but the truth of the matter is there were no big reveals and the majority of the panels that were shot were edited weeks ago and weren't presented live. The virtual event didn't offer an interactive alternative which could've made fans feel like a part of the action. 

YouTube views on the panels were also nowhere near the success that most were anticipating. THE NEW MUTANTS panels proved to be the biggest of the annual event with the panel pulling in over 200,000 views as of this writing. Considering how many views they could pull in from a fan recording at the live event, these numbers are completely stale. As for the TV side of things, The Walking Dead was the clear winner, along with Vikings, but even their presence was muted compared to years past.

Perhaps other virtual events that are planned could learn from the mistakes made by Comic-Con@Home. DC's FanDome event takes place virtually next month and there is already considerable hype surrounding it thanks in part to Zack Snyder's JUSTICE LEAGUE. If they can pull off a more interactive experience, it could prove to be more successful because, even with technical difficulties, fans want to be able to interact with the cast and crew of their favorite franchises and not sit and watch a pre-recorded video with no substance. Fans couldn't talk with the creators and talent and that deflated the whole experience. Hopefully, everything will be back to normal in 2021 and the live event can come back better than ever but if they're forced to do this again, maybe they should at what went wrong and make necessary improvements.

Did YOU check out Comic-Con@Home? What were YOUR thoughts on the virtual event?