The new opening event‚ ‘gamescom: Opening Night Live’, becomes the games highlight worldwide

373,000 visitors from more than 100 countries, including 31,300 trade visitors, are guests in Cologne
Millions of visitors follow gamescom online
Area expansion and new offerings are convincing

gamescom, August 20-24, 2019, reached more people than ever before in 2019: a total of 373,000 visitors from more than 100 countries, 31,300 of them trade visitors. These are joined by the millions of gamers worldwide who followed the innovations online: more than 500,000 spectators alone simultaneously watched the new, international ‘gamescom: Opening Night Live’ show with producer and moderator Geoff Keighley in the live stream. The show thus already joined the international top events of the games industry with the premiere in terms of reach. In the first days alone, the video content of gamescom was called up far more than 100 million times worldwide. The offerings of the new digital platform gamescom now also contributed to this, among others. On site, 1,153 companies (+10 percent) ensured unprecedented gaming diversity in the Cologne exhibition halls in an expanded area of 218,000 square metres (+8 percent). The share of foreign exhibitors was around 70 percent, and thus once again underlines the international importance of gamescom. The area expansion, adjustments to hall allocation, as well as improved catering offerings contributed to a more comfortable visit and met with a positive response from guests on location. The new event arena convinced eSports fans on all public days with the tournaments of various publishers. gamescom celebrated another premiere online.

Gerald Böse, President and Chief Executive Officer of Koelnmesse GmbH:

“gamescom once again impressively continued its success story this year: on site and online. With ‘gamescom: Opening Night Live’, we have taken a decisive step in the direction of becoming an international platform for new products. At the same time, the show was also the starting point for our new gamescom now digital offering, with which we offered the digital community additional access to gamescom. Thanks to the successful combination of a unique gaming offering on the grounds, supplemental formats and the extension to the online world, we have further strengthened gamescom as a 360-degree experience event and a leading communication platform. There have never been this many innovations at gamescom – never have we reached so many people as in this year.”

Felix Falk, Managing Director of game – The German Games Industry Association:

“The international relevance of gamescom has never been greater than in this year. Especially our new show, ‘gamescom: Opening Night Live’, has already shown with its premiere how strong the worldwide interest in gamescom is. With ‘gamescom now’, we have also created a gathering point at which players can acquire an overview of the many new products and events on the fair grounds. As the largest games event in the world, gamescom this year primarily stood for many new products, for the wonderful community and for themes such as inclusion and diversity.”

gamescom 2019: more new products than ever before:

The furious start to this year’s gamescom week was provided by the new opening event gamescom: Opening Night Live. On Monday, August 9, 2019 at 8:00 p.m., host and producer Geoff Keighley inspired more than 1,500 visitors on site and millions of people worldwide. More than 500,000 spectators watched simultaneously in the live stream. The brand new show programme featured announcements from major publishers and independent developers, world premieres with new trailers, as well as guest appearances by stars from the international games industry. One of the highlights was the appearance of the visionary game developer Hideo Kojima, who provided exclusive advance insights into Death Stranding.

After the first public day, enthusiastic fans then celebrated the fascination of computer games, including in the newly opened event arena. Various companies, including Gameloft, ESL, Riot Games and Telekom, presented spectacular tournaments on a daily basis and thus ensured unprecedented eSports variety. “Indies”, one of this year’s trend themes, found a new home in the gamescom indie village. More than 150 games from 140 developers from more than 30 countries offered more indie games than ever before and made the trend theme experienceable for the many fans on site.

Those who were this year no longer able to acquire an admission ticket for gamescom had the possibility to view many live streams and videos from gamescom 2019 at gamescom now. Throughout the entire duration of the trade fair, the gamescom now team provided a variety of impressions of the world’s largest event for computer and video games: ‘booth tours’, events captured by the show floor crew, live content from the new event arena and the indie village or interviews and gameplays from the ‘IGN@gamescom now’ studio were just some examples of the new digital offering. A total of far more than 28 hours of live streams was available for gaming fans worldwide.

gamescom week 2019: comprehensive event and conference programme

The gamescom week started with the developer conference devcom. The programme was varied: more than 90 speeches were held, including keynotes by Cristian Pana (Ubisoft Massive) and Randy Varnell (Gearbox). In total, the devcom already attracted more than 3,000 visitors to the Cologne fair grounds on 18 and 19 August. On gamescom Monday, more than 700 participants from the sports, media and eSports industries used SPOBIS Gaming & Media for an informative exchange and intensive networking. The gamescom congress ended on August 21 with an excellent balance: around 900 visitors didn’t want to miss the congress on gamescom Wednesday. More than 100 speakers demonstrated the varied potential in computer games and thus impressively underlined the fact that the gamescom congress is justifiably viewed as Europe’s leading think tank revolving around games and digitalisation. The gamescom week 2019 was once again traditionally concluded by the beloved gamescom city festival. Until August 25, 2019, the motto at Neumarkt, Rudolfplatz and Hohenzollernring was once again: Stage free for games, music and street food! More than 100,000 additional visitors were expected for the gamescom city festival in the Rhine metropolIs.

In 2020, gamescom will take place from Tuesday, August 25 to Saturday, August 29 in Cologne.

gamescom 2019 Figures:

Digital reach:
2019: more than 100 million video accesses worldwide (still strongly increasing)

Visitors on site:
2019: 373,000
2018: 370,000

of these, trade visitors:
2019: 31,300
2018: 31,200

Exhibiting companies:
2019: 1,153, foreign share of around 70 percent
2018: 1,037, foreign share of 70 percent

Exhibition space:
2019: 218,000 m²
2018: 201,000 m²

Nathan Stevens

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I have always enjoyed playing video games and am a programming team lead for a video game company. I co-founded Gaming Cypher because I enjoy the gaming community and would like to provide the best news service around. Feel free to ask me any questions and I will make sure to get back to you quickly.