Event Snapshot: TwitchCon 2023 Las Vegas

TwitchCon 2023 was held in Las Vegas from October 20-22nd. This is my 3rd year working on the expo portion of the event (2018, 2022, and now 2023). Here’s a closer look:

This event, unlike most events that I work on, definitely has less of a business feel and more of a festival party feel.  Streamers are the celebrities here.

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What’s Twitch?

Twitch is a live-streaming platform for gamers.  Approximately 15 million people use it daily.  As a benchmark, in 2023, an average of 18.7 million viewers watched Sunday Night Football, once a week.

I get a lot of ummm people in my age bracket… rolling their eyes, not understanding the “watching other people play video games.”

Let’s put this into perspective:

Have you ever watched a football game? A tennis match? Then you, too, have watched other people play a game, watched someone else do something. And in Twitch’s case, the people watching actually also play the game. They’re learning. There’s actual interaction between the audience and the streamer. The streamer is a personality that you get to know on a more personal level and interact with.

One of the most popular streamers, Tyler1, has 5.3M followers on Twitch. That’s more than a lot of celebrities and rock stars.  Some of these streamers make (literally) millions. Even streamers with a much smaller following of 100 viewers can make $1000 – $1500 per month.

Back to TwitchCon

TwitchCon is about community.  It’s the streamers’ and followers’ opportunity to make connections “IRL”, as Twitch says.

There are plenty of opportunities for connections. From the intense Twitch Rivals tournaments to the live performances by top streamers, there was never a dull moment. And let’s not even get started on the meet-ups and after-parties – networking opportunities were everywhere!

The panels and workshops are less formal sessions and more hangouts with fellow gaming fans.

Twitch does a great job of highlighting voices that don’t always get the spotlight, making sure everyone feels valued and included. “Everyone belongs.”

Takeaways

Keep in mind that this audience is much different from the corporate tech, and while I understand that, I do think that a lot of the lessons and takeaways are similar.

Hands-On

Streaming and video games weren’t the only things you could do. Hands-on was the name of the game at an event like TwitchCon.

Attendees drew:

built with Legos:

played Chess:

 

 

The Bob Ross booth provided art classes that sold out:

Sponsorships

The event offered plenty of opportunities for innovative sponsorships that attendees can actually use and want:

Doordash’s genius sponsorship:

Signage

Say bye to boring signage. It’s important that signage be functional, but it’s also the decoration of an event. It can give life, set the tone, and set the event’s mood. TwitchCon’s was bright and fun:

Artist Alley

Artist Alley is a zone of 118 indie artists that come to TwitchCon to share their products. Stickers, keychains, hoodies.

and the Charity Zone

 

Charity Zone is full of non-profit organizations who get a large portion of their funding from streamers.

 

TwitchCon 2023 Behind-the-Scenes Peek: Move-In