I'm still seeing online discussions about the possibility of Comic-Con leaving San Diego and relocating to Las Vegas. This is another one of those topics upon which I don't want to squander a lot of time. I still think it won't leave San Diego because I still think San Diego would be stupid-beyond-belief to let it go. I also think that if it did go elsewhere, Vegas would be among the least likely places and not just because of the weather.
What I will mention here is that just about every online discussion I've seen arguing for Vegas says that the annual Consumer Electronics Show there is way bigger than Comic-Con and that plenty of cheap hotel rooms are available in Vegas during the C.E.S. Hmm…let's fact-check that: The official attendance count for the C.E.S. held in January of this year was — and you can verify this here — 138,789 attendees. All the reports on last year's Comic-Con in S.D. say it had 150,000 attendees.
The city of Las Vegas was famously built on people not being able to do math…but I still believe 138,789 is not way more than 150,000.
And really those numbers don't mean much in any debate because no one knows how many people would attend Comic-Con if it wasn't limited by the capacity of the San Diego Convention Center. The folks arguing for the con to move to Las Vegas think it would be way, way bigger there but assume increased demands would not lead to increased room rates. But hotels in Vegas love to raise rates when the town gets crowded. They do it on certain holidays — New Year's Eve, especially. And during the first of what will be several Formula-1 races in Vegas, hotels were charging thousands of dollars per night for rooms that usually go for a few hundred.
And lastly, let's remember that Comic-Con attracts more visitors to San Diego than the official attendance. Lots of people travel there during Comic-Con because there are so many events that are accessible even if you can't get a badge for the con itself. Here's a list of some of what's available to those folks this year.