SPIEL Essen ends as the largest event ever
From October 4th to 8th, 193,000 game enthusiasts from 85 countries came to SPIEL Essen, the largest international public fair for board games. Thanks to this impressive number and a total area of 62,500 m², the largest SPIEL ever took place. The variety of the more than 1,700 new products shown at the world's leading trade fair proved that board games are more modern and up-to-date than ever.
Successful start
The success of SPIEL Essen 23 is also overwhelming for the new seven-member team of the organizing Merz Verlag. "We had hoped that more people would come to SPIEL than last year, but we didn't expect this number," says Carol Rapp, managing director of Merz Verlag since November. "It was wonderful to feel so much joy in the halls, at the game tables, in the aisles and among the exhibitors. We changed a lot of things this year to make SPIEL even more accessible and appealing, and the amount of visitors on all days, as well as the general feedback, shows us that we've done it."
Part of those changes was the thematic sorting of the halls into family games, connoisseur and expert games, and role-playing, collectible card and miniature games. The new hall concept, coupled with much wider aisles, helped to better distribute the crowds in the halls.
Due to this measure, even small booths of rather unknown exhibitors were easy to find in all halls. With 935 exhibitors from 56 nations, SPIEL was again extremely international this year.
Success for exhibitors
The clearly increased interest in SPIEL Essen had an effect above all on the frequency among the exhibitors: "Our stand was really well visited on all four days. The game tables were almost always completely occupied," says Andreas Finkernagel, Managing Director of the Friedberg-based publisher Pegasus Spiele, and adds: "We had significantly more sales at the fair than in previous years. Although the individual receipt was somewhat lower, we had many more customers at our cash register."
Ravensburger laid down a real blockbuster with its new trading card game Disney Lorcana, for which an exclusive special card was released at SPIEL Essen. The queue for the game broke through the hall wall and had to be directed through a gate into the adjacent Hall 7. Never before has the fair experienced such a rush.
Looking forward to 2024
Now the organizers are getting down to the business of evaluating the feedback and starting directly to plan and further optimize the next SPIEL. They have almost exactly one year to do this: SPIEL Essen 24 will take place from October 3rd to 6th, 2024.
Source: Press Release Spiel Essen