Thousands of gamers, comic book fans and otakus are shouting “Scam! Scam! Scam!” inside the Trade Fair and Congress Center of Málaga, Andalusia, in southern Spain — one of the poorest regions of the country, and therefore of Europe. What’s surprising is that this isn’t just any comic convention: it’s the first time the famous San Diego Comic-Con lands in Europe. The very same legendary convention we’ve all seen on TV in shows like The Big Bang Theory. The obvious question any European would ask is: What on earth is it doing in Andalusia?
Problems with the largest Comic-Con licensed event
The organization of the event was a disaster from the very start. The website crashed, tickets sold out even before the final program was announced, and many people had to settle for tickets on days they didn’t want. Yet only weeks later, after the announcement of celebrity guests like Jim Lee — the artist behind Iron Man and the X-Men — tickets magically became available again. The venue capacity was suddenly expanded… as if by sorcery.
Official brochures of the convention center list a maximum capacity of 20,000, yet the event ultimately sold 120,000 tickets across four days — that’s 30,000 per day, far exceeding what fans claim was legally allowed. The result of this was endless lines and suffocating crowds, documented in hundreds of videos. Thousands of people spent hours under the blazing Andalusian sun — anyone who’s been to southern Spain in summer knows that can feel like medieval torture. The venue ran out of water, forcing the arrival of a tanker truck. Outside food was banned, while on-site vendors sold overpriced snacks. Event rooms filled up within minutes, leaving out even those who had booked seats days in advance.
All this, coupled with low-quality stands, poor time management, and other irregularities unbecoming of what’s supposed to be the world’s biggest comic convention licensed, the San Diego–Málaga Comic-Con International, has sparked a wave of complaints and consumer lawsuits. Attendees are pointing fingers both at the organizers and at local government officials, both sides show signs of serious misconduct.
When a politician announces he’s going to hand millions of euros to a private company to “correct a market failure”, a supposed “social need” that the market isn’t currently meeting, that’s when we should roll up our sleeves and start investigating. Because, as the English saying goes, someone’s probably trying to sell us a pup.
In this case, under the pretext of “promoting tourism” and “boosting the Andalusia brand,” the regional government (Junta de Andalucía) and the city of Málaga jointly paid €4.5 million (taxes included) for the event. Of that, just over €2 million (85% of the investment) will come from European Union funds. Ironically, that means the bill will be paid by citizens across Europe who neither wanted nor could attend the event.
The company Dentsu Spain S.L. purchased the Comic-Con International (CCI) license, but the entity chosen to organize the convention was neither an industry leader nor a company with experience in large-scale events. In fact, it didn’t even exist, the organizing company was created only a few months before being awarded the contract. That, fans argue, smells like misuse of public funds, although that remains to be seen; however, it is undeniably strange that, with €4 million in taxpayer money, a private event was funded, even stranger when it was justified as a “tourism booster.”
First, because you can’t stimulate the economy with subsidies (see: Diyar Kassymov’s article). Second, because even if you could, a tourism-based economy is far from a healthy, productive, or sustainable economy (see: VisualPolitik’s video essay for examples).
To be fair… not every criticism holds up
Let’s dot the i’s and cross the t’s. Some say that the chaos stemmed from poor oversight and a lack of adherence to CCI’s official guidelines. Others, mockingly called it the “AliExpress Comic-Con,” since the event wasn’t organized by the San Diego original team but by the newly created spanish company: Cosmic Legends Productions S.L.
While U.S. conventions like those in Chicago or New York are operated by the same CCI team, fans say, Spain’s edition was handled by an ad hoc local company that merely purchased the right to use the name.
To clarify this point: San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) was founded in 1973, and in 1995 changed its name to Comic-Con International: San Diego (CCI), not because it expanded to other states or countries, but because it partnered with cultural groups like the Mythopoeic Society and the Society for Creative Anachronism, and absorbed the San Diego Comic Book Expo in 1984. The “International” in its name refers not to its location, but to its global reputation (Guinness World Record, “Largest convention of comic books”).
This leads us to the first misconception. Contrary to what some fans claim, CCI still operates in San Diego. And given the high competitiveness of the events industry, where anyone with modest seed capital can host massive gatherings — something about which our friends at Students For Liberty know a lot — other U.S. comic conventions compete directly with San Diego’s for audiences and sponsors.
Events in Chicago, New York, Seattle, or Florida are run by ReedPop, an independent company unaffiliated with CCI. They are separate events, separate companies, much like countless comic conventions in France, Spain, or Germany.
Just like McDonald’s or Zara franchises, using the Comic-Con name comes with strict quality and brand-control requirements. Ironically, this means that Málaga’s Comic-Con likely faced tighter supervision from CCI than those in Chicago or New York.
Yes, it may seem suspicious that a brand-new company was entrusted with organizing the Spanish event — but that’s actually common practice in the convention industry. Whether there’s anything unlawful about it is not immediately evident.
Another accusation, that the venue exceeded its capacity, also remains unproven. While some fans cite promotional flyers listing a 20,000-person limit, city officials told local media that the total approved capacity was 30,000, consistent with the number of tickets sold, right at the limit, but not beyond it. Even if the lower number were true, the same newspaper reporting fans’ complaints also noted that the Andalucía Big Festival hosted roughly 30,000 people per day at the same venue without major issues. So…
How do we explain the chaos?
In TikTok videos compiled by Idiocracia.org’s short documentary, fans discovered that there was virtually no security. The fences surrounding the venue weren’t locked or chained, and in one clip a person can be seen casually slipping through a loose barrier to get inside.
Many fan complaints do appear well-founded. QR codes and reservations often went unchecked, resulting in overcrowded rooms and fans with valid bookings being turned away. Tickets were not individually assigned, meaning anyone could swap wristbands with a friend, walk out wearing two, and hand one off to another pal outside, repeat as needed. A classic festival hack.
In short, this case reveals — in plain sight — how our governments burn through millions of euros on incompetent contractors. Not every criticism of Málaga’s Comic-Con is fair, but many certainly are. Private companies can fail — no one’s perfect — but unlike the government, they cannot throw you in jail if you refuse to fund them. Let’s be less forgiving with the public administrations.
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