The Most Iconic Comic Con in New York
Hailed as the largest convention on the East Coast, New York Comic Con (NYCC) attracts hundreds of thousands of passionate fans to its four-day convention every year. Hosted at the Javits Center in New York City, each day is jam-packed with all things pop culture, including comic books, gaming, cosplay, art, and anime. They’ve hosted some of the world’s most iconic film and TV celebrities, award-winning comic artists and anime creators, hundreds of panels, and so much more. At New York Comic Con, everyone is empowered to embrace their inner geek!
This fandom convention is one of numerous events hosted by ReedPop, a global leader in pop culture events. In fact, NYCC was first hosted in 2006, the same year this group was founded. Over the past few decades, this company continues to grow and deliver once-in-a-lifetime fan experiences at major comic cons across North America, Europe, and Asia.
Leap Event Technology has worked with ReedPop for the past decade, helping fuel its event operations at New York Comic Con. To learn more, we met with Senior Brand Marketing Coordinator Derrick Weiss to explore how our team has helped elevate the fan experiences at New York Comic Con.
How New York Comic Con Uses Leap’s Suite of Solutions
New York Comic Con utilizes Leap’s complete suite of event technology solutions to put on its convention. “We use everything, and we use it in different ways across the whole ReedPop business,” Weiss noted. Since Leap is a data-first company, each of our technology solutions brings tons of opportunity to collect attendee data from their unique touchpoints to leverage for future events. Throughout this article, we’ll explore how our mobile apps, experiential marketing, ticketing, celebrity photo ops, and convention management software all work together to enhance various aspects of New York Comic Con.
LEAP DELIVERS RESULTS
Increase in attendee satisfaction with the mobile app
Estimated to check in 3,000 attendees to a panel
Increase in exhibitors using lead capture
Fans attended the 4-day convention
*Data collected from New York Comic Con in 2023 and 2024
Elevating Fan Experiences with Our Mobile App
Over the past several years, attendees have used Leap’s mobile app to navigate New York Comic Con and engage with the convention. Eager to improve the app for fans, the ReedPop team gathered feedback from an attendee survey after NYCC 2023. Based on the responses, improving the app’s personalization and wayfinding capabilities were two areas they focused on for their next convention. Once these goals were established for 2024, Weiss explained that “we sat down with…the Leap product team for the mobile app to talk about what we wanted to do and why we wanted to do it. And once we figured out an effective way to work, we started making some significant progress.”
Here are some of the ways we collaborated with the ReedPop team to enhance their mobile app in 2024 and the success it brought them.
Personalizing Experiences with Segmentation
Since New York Comic Con is a huge fandom convention with tons going on at any given time, new fans may have difficulty knowing what they should do. After all, there are thousands of exhibitors, panels, and other fun activities to choose from. On the other hand, experienced fans may want to more easily determine what’s new, what’s changed, and what’s happening related to their interests.
That’s where updates to our mobile app come into play. When a fan first opens the app, they can select from ten different interests, or “segments”, that curate the content they see. For each segment, certain widget screens would only appear in the app if it aligned with the person’s interests (anime, gaming, etc.). “Personalization is how we connect the fan with what they want to see,” Weiss noted. This way, the NYCC team can also send push notifications to specific segments. For example, if an upcoming panel on anime still has a few spots left, they can notify just anime fans to better boost attendance to that event.
Improving Wayfinding with Interactive Maps
With three floors filled with over a thousand exhibitors, New York Comic Con can be challenging to navigate at times. The solution? Improving our mobile app to each fan’s personal guide through the convention. “The goal here was to provide excellent wayfinding for our fans within our app – think Google Maps with directions from Point A to Point B,” Weiss explained. “The fact that we could do all this within six months we started working on it with [Leap]…and then we had this functionality down really well by New York Comic Con in mid-October was fantastic.”
As part of this, all the content from New York Comic Con – including panels, guests, exhibitors, artist alley creators, and authors – is housed in our convention management software which is integrated with our mobile app. This content then populates the app in such a way that fans can click on the guest they’d like to see, then it’ll navigate them directly to where they want to go. “Anecdotally throughout the show, lots of staff members or crew members would just come up to me and say that they heard fans talking about how useful [the app] was,” said Weiss. “So, I know that the interactive maps went really, really far.”
The Result? An App That Delivers!
After the convention, the ReedPop team sent out a follow-up survey asking for fans’ thoughts on the mobile app that year. When asked about the usefulness of the app, this rating (out of 10) increased from 6 to 7.8, which Weiss explained is “an enormous improvement, especially at a show as mature as New York Comic Con [where] it's really hard to see large increases in anything.” Reflecting on what caused this two-point increase, Weiss said it was due to their improvements to the personalization and wayfinding aspects of the app. For example, 68% of fans used the interactive maps feature, and 39% of them considered it extremely useful by ranking it either 9 or 10 out of 10. “In that same time, we also started seeing fans more satisfied with what they found and were able to do in the app across all of our shows,” Weiss shared when reflecting on these changes. “The biggest change in the past few years was launching the 2.0 version of the app and your team making a lot of iterative improvements along the way.”
From 2023 to 2024 specifically, the overall number of fans who downloaded the app for New York City Comic Con increased from 70% to 73%. Weiss later shared, “Our app downloads have increased by a significant amount each year, from 2023 to 2024, some of them increased by up to 90%.” This shows how fans using the app found it helpful, downloading it again the next year and getting their friends and family to download it too. “All those changes – big and small – added up to make a significant difference in how our fans spent their time at the show, explored new content, and spent their money with us.”
Capturing More Data with Our Fan Engagement Tools
Thanks to our experiential marketing solution, Leap has added an extra layer of fun for fans at New York Comic Con! From interactive mobile games to scavenger hunts, we’ve helped boost attendee engagement like never before through the mobile app and badge activations. Fans are doing more than just attending — they’re connecting with a vibrant community around their shared passions. On top of that, New York Comic Con has now unlocked a wealth of data about fans for their team, exhibitors, and sponsors.
Curious how we helped make this happen? Let’s take a closer look at some ways we’ve woven these experiences into their event day.
Creating Epic Experiences for Fans & Celebrities
An unforgettable part of every year’s convention is the opportunity for fans to meet their favorite celebrities! Every year, Leap’s team fuels the onsite operations surrounding the celebrity photo ops and autographs of New York Comic Con. We met with Senior Talent Buyer Edwin Raymond to learn more about how they successfully manage these experiences with our support.
Providing Seamless Ticketing
Given how their tickets have been in extremely high demand the past few years, the attendance numbers at New York Comic Con have been consistently hitting max capacity. “They've been flat for a few years because there's no more space for bodies in the Javits Center,” Weiss stated, “But a lot of other numbers went up in a really good way.” With our event ticketing system, fans can purchase from a variety of badges online. Once badges are shipped to fans, they can register their unique badge credentials online and quickly scan into the convention on event day. “In terms of ticketing in general, it works really well,” affirmed Weiss.
Working with Leap’s Team
By working with us, New York Comic Con gains more than just an all-in-one solution of event technology. They gain a passionate team of event experts who are determined to help make this a success year after year. From managing photo ops to supporting their admissions, our team has worked closely with the NYCC crew to ensure every process runs smoothly.
“The folks that we've started working with [on Leap’s team] have also been really wonderful and, once processes were established, it's been really nice so far,” Raymond emphasized. He also shared how our experienced photo ops staff and their dedicated service has been a key reason they’ve continued to work with us. “They've been a really big piece of why we've stuck with Epic for so long,” he said, pointing to the strong relationships we’ve built with them over time. Our quick response to feedback, even in challenging moments, has helped us continuously improve and better serve their convention’s needs.
In the months leading up to New York Comic Con, our team assists with many aspects of their convention, including planning onsite logistics, making improvements to the mobile app, and coordinating their ticket on-sales. When working on the mobile app specifically, Weiss highlighted how the members of Leap’s mobile team are “super on top of it” and “willing to help out regardless of what the problem is.”
Keeping a convention as massive as NYCC on track requires immense attention to detail, and with so many deadlines and moving parts, we’ve recently brought a dedicated project manager on board to ensure nothing fell through the cracks. As Weiss highlighted, “If we miss one deadline, it affects a hundred other things. So, by keeping us on top of those deadlines, the project manager makes it much easier for us to focus our attention across the business while ensuring nothing is missed in the process.” By keeping track of all their projects and providing our expert insight along the way, we’re empowering the NYCC team to focus on creating an incredible experience for fans.
During the four days of the convention, we send a large group of Leap’s team members to assist onsite. This group helps monitor the scanners at entrances and exits, assists at the registration desk, sets up and tears down the event technology, runs their photo ops, and much more. Whether it’s finding solutions for badge setup, fine-tuning the mobile app, or simply being responsive to problems that arise, Weiss remarked that “Your whole team is really easy to work with.” With a shared commitment to excellence, Leap Event Technology is proud to be a trusted partner of New York Comic Con.
“All those changes – big and small – added up to make a significant difference to how our fans spent their time at the show, explored new content, and spent their money with us. Thank you for improving the app for our fans, but also thank you for making my job a bit easier. The flexibility and power of the CMS has given me the tools I need to put everything in front of our fans in a way that makes sense for them and hits our business goals.”
Derrick WeissSenior Brand Marketing Coordinator at New York Comic Con