The announcement that shook the nerd universe to the core that Zachary Levi and his Nerd HQ tribe would not be at this year’s San Diego Comic Con in their usual way left us either sad or in shock.
Since 2011, Nerd HQ has grown into what is now, in my honest opinion, the best off-site event at Comic-con. Free exclusive game play, free parties, celebrity panels from our favorite shows and ALL proceeds of said panel profits go straight to Operation Smile. It has become as synonymous with SDCC as Hall H is.
Celebrity guest have included The Walking Dead cast, the cast of Arrow, Supernateral, Joss Whedon, Alan Tudyk and Nathan Fillion to name a few.
So let’s now get to the heart of the matter. What exactly happen? Well, it seems as though Nerd HQ lost 2 of it’s sponsors. Even though they make money off the sales of panel tickets, as stated before, those proceeds go straight to charity. The sponsors are the ones to actually pay for the event and it’s not cheap. An event like Nerd HQ at SDCC costs approximately $700,000 to produce.
Sponsors usually have a limited contract with the organization that they sponsor and that contract runs for about 3 years or so. It is not meant to be on-going. So with the sponsors pulling out, that ultimately meant that there was no money to put up for the event.
It’s easy for us to ask from the outside looking in, “Why couldn’t Levi put up his money? He’s a celebrity,” or”Why don’t they try to raise the money on a donation site?” Well, the answer to those questions would be that $700,000 is a whole lot of money to dish out of pocket as well as to raise. They had tried a Kickstarter campaign in the passed but were only able to raise $250,000. A little over 1/3 of what they actually need.
So in short, it comes down to money. It almost always comes down to money. They may be missing from this year’s SDCC but there is always next year and plenty of time to aquire new sponsors and funds.
But getting back to this year, Zachary Levi and the Syfy network has already announced that Levi will be hosting this year’s Syfy Presents Live from Comic Con. This made all of our geeky hearts flutter. Levi did state in his video that there would be a flurry of announcements regarding SDCC but so far this makes only one -announcement- singular! So I am hoping that there will be more news from the Nerd Machine umbrella.
#NerdsUnite
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