Leftfield Media Buys in to Rose City Comic Con

The slow, eventual consolidation of conventions continues, as Leftfield Media announced yesterday that they are now a part owner of Portland, OR based Rose City Comic Con. Rose City Comic Con, founded by Ron and Paula Brister, ran their first event in 2012 and regularly hits five digit attendance numbers.

Leftfield Media, based in Connecticut, currently operates a handful of events, including their newly announced Five Points Festival, Anime NYC, and Awesome Con (which Leftfield Media bought in 2015). Of course, Leftfield Media was purchased by Georgia based Urban Expositions (who run over two dozen events themselves) in August of 2016. If that wasn’t enough for you, Urban Expositions, of course, is a subsidiary of London based Clarion Events.

I think eventually, if you dig far enough, you’ll find the snake begins to eat itself.

Frankly, with the slow absorption of independently owned major events by groups like Leftfield Media and ReedPOP, it seems like there’s a slow but sure movement for corporate consolidation in the major Pop Culture expo business. Frankly, considering that these are the most expensive conventions to operate, it’s not all that surprising.

I’m just not completely sure it’s a good thing.