Blizzard Suffered Deficit on BlizzCon09!

Eight Minutes, YES! Tickets to Blizzcon 2009 were sold for a hefty 125 dollars each - more than Comic Con, more than PAX - and yet all 20,000 of them sold out in eight minutes! BUT! From Blizzard's AGDC Keynote: Blizzard's J. Allen Brack and Frank Pearce talked about long-canceled sci-fi RPG Nomad, and revealed that despite its popularity and pricey tickets, BlizzCon is written off as a financial loss. It’s hard to imagine that BlizzCon is anything but a financial killing for the Irvine-based PC developer.

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Hard to imagine, perhaps, but it's actually ... true? According to Joystiq, Blizzard's Frank Pearce revealed during his joint AGDC keynote with colleague J. Allen Brack that BlizzCon is operated "at a substantial loss for Blizzard." It's not all that hard to see why, either - beyond renting out the enormous Anaheim Convention Center, stages and sets need to be built, massive banks of computers need to be set up and run (and electricity doesn't come free), staff needs to be paid, et cetera.

Pearce also mentioned that BlizzCon is operated "at a substantial loss for Blizzard," but the value is that it's a huge marketing/PR opportunity for them. Considering how many tickets they sell (in only eight minutes), that's around $3.5 million that's written off. Plus whatever Blizzard spends above and beyond that. No wonder Blizzard employees have to buy their own tickets.