Comic-Con alternative CCXP has harnessed a growing phenomenon

Each time CCXP starts, nearly everyone in São Paulo feels it. A 40-minute drive to the São Paulo Expo convention center can suddenly take three hours with traffic. Some attendees travel over 1,800 miles to watch as many panels as possible at the entertainment and comics event. In 2023, fans got in line a full day ahead to meet horror mangaka Junji Ito, despite him being present all four days of the show.

“The economic impact of tourism on the state of São Paulo is notable,” YouTuber Regina Vieira tells Polygon via email. “I made the mistake [of reserving my hotel in 2023] too late and most of the well-known hotel accommodations near the neighborhood were fully booked.”

Vieira also noticed that every panel she went to was at maximum capacity, and fans would often scream, laugh out loud, and dance with the background music. “I feel like CCXP is more than just an event,” she says. “To someone who only went to smaller events, such as me, it was shocking to see this much devotion — and I can say also stressful because there were lines for most of the things there.”

For the group behind CCXP, Omelete Company, reaching and maintaining this status has been no easy feat. Issues such as inflation and economic disparity are natural obstacles to hosting international guests who tend to fly first class, pay for insurance and security to ship equipment for panels, and book five-star hotel rooms.

The first edition of CCXP was held in December 2014 in São Paulo. Originally just a media outlet, Omelete partnered with local companies Piziitoys and Chiaroscuro Studios for collectibles and comic books, respectively. The stakes were high. According to CCXP vice president of content Roberto Fabri, had the first edition failed to meet expectations, the company would’ve gone bankrupt.

A decade later, CCXP has held conventions across Brazil, Germany, and Mexico. While CCXP Cologne was put on standby with the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war making it hard to operate in Europe, the current schedule — Brazil in December and Mexico in May — allows the team to anticipate the winter and summer releases in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres. It also ensures a larger audience, covering both the Portuguese and Spanish languages.

Gabi Orsini has attended every CCXP in Brazil, both as a fan and as a journalist. She was still in college when the 2014 convention took place, and she saw it as an opportunity to cover an event in a professional capacity for the first time. She says it had always been her dream to attend Comic-Con in San Diego and New York. “When they started with this [pop culture event] in Brazil, I was like, OK, this is my chance. I can live the dream. And my job allows me to go without paying for the ticket,“ Orsini says.

Aside from international box-office numbers — Inside Out 2 grossed $102.2 million in Mexico and $80 million in Brazil — Fabri attributes Hollywood’s interest in Latin America to the high use of social media, as well as the potential for crowds to deliver loud responses during panels. “I’ve been in some panels in San Diego, and sometimes they have, I don’t know, Tom Cruise on stage, and the Americans were clapping like a theater or an opera,” Fabri says. “In Brazil, you say, ‘This is the voice actor of X anime,’ and it looks like the World Cup.”

Despite that, as the event gets closer to its 10th anniversary, the next taking place from Dec. 5 to Dec. 8 in São Paulo, the team’s needs for new revenue sources and sponsors to cover expenses have increased, according to a Valor Econômico report, as costs “have doubled in the post-pandemic period due to the high exchange rate and fuel prices.” The Mexico edition has helped in this regard — it takes around three hours to fly in from Los Angeles, as opposed to over 10 hours to Brazil, and the team doesn’t need to pay taxes to ship equipment like projectors and sound systems from the U.S. But discoverability has been an issue, especially when embarking on a country for the first time.

The company also stopped calling the event “Comic Con Experience” and opted for a general renaming to CCXP for 2019 and onward, abandoning the “Comic Con Experience” and “Comic Con Experience São Paulo” trademarks after 2018, and retaining only “CCXP,” “CCXP SP,” and “CCXP Unlock” since. This change came from the intention of solidifying the CCXP brand while avoiding trademark issues as the event grew bigger, says Fabri. “At the beginning, people were like, What is CCXP? Why Brazil? And we were like, Oh, because we have a strong community and we don’t have any kind of comic con in Brazil,” he says. “At the beginning, it helps to connect with the idea of the event that you want to have.”

According to Fabri, no one from San Diego reached out to the team due to using the “Comic Con” name because “comic con is a type of event and not a brand itself,” he says. During the first few years, the event had a different logo that looked like a Rubik’s Cube with “Comic Con Experience” on it. “No one knows that the Rubik’s Cube logo is a trademark brand,” he says. “We were like, It’s better to stop using that, otherwise we will have problems.” (In 2017, a jury in San Diego ruled in favor of Comic-Con International owning the trademark for the term “comic con” as a descriptor for a pop culture fan event.)

Brazil is already well aware of what CCXP is, but the onboarding process hasn’t been as smooth for Mexico’s first edition. At the start of 2024, marketing signs around Mexico City — first appearing mostly on buses and then as bigger banners around the city itself — displayed only the logo. According to content creator Dave Villareal, those unaware of the brand couldn’t tell that CCXP was related to a pop culture event. As the event got closer, there was a stronger marketing push on social media, where interest picked up, with the campaign pitching the upcoming convention as “the biggest geek culture event” in the country.

Another issue during the lead-up to the event was the lack of formal announcements of guests and panels until less than a month before it kicked off. Villareal noticed a low attendance (56,000 people attended CCXP Mexico, according to Fabri, compared to 287,000 attendees at CCXP Brazil 2023, according to a press release), which he attributes to the missing details paired with ticket costs.

“Perhaps in other countries with more money, either the U.S. or the U.K. where events of this scale are more common, it’s more common to announce artists a month before,“ Villareal says. “But that doesn’t work the same in Mexico. People in Latin America need to save money for these things.”

One-day passes were selling for around 1,300 Mexican pesos, or around $65 today. At the time of publication, the minimum wage in Mexico is between 5,000 and 6,000 pesos per month, or around $250 to $300. Alongside tickets, people need to account for travel and accommodations. Once settled, Villareal says, the most common method of transportation in Mexico City is the metro, but CCXP’s venue was far from the city center, and there’s no station nearby. People ended up either driving or taking taxis, the latter quickly adding to the overall cost. Villareal, who attended all three days as well as an invite-only preview night, spent around $30 each day.

“At least in Mexico, we’re not used to such a high price for an event,” he says, while noting disorganization from the event’s staff, who he says were unsure of the schedule when asked for directions, such as the proper line to get an autograph or photo with talent. And he says, on average, people had to arrive an hour ahead of each panel to secure a spot. “Nowadays, after attending the event, I can say that it’s worth it for just one day, which is enough to see everything.”

Vieira echoes a similar feeling around ticket prices for CCXP Brazil. In 2023, a four-day pass cost 1,800 Brazilian reais (around $300 today) while the minimum wage is 1,412 reais a month. And in 2024, fans had another event to budget for — Disney hosted its fan event D23 in Brazil from Nov. 8 to Nov. 10. According to the fan account Portal D23 Brasil on X (formerly known as Twitter), as well as replies to Disney Brazil’s Instagram account, three-day passes sold within a day on June 14, despite the fact that Disney hadn’t announced guests or panels. “People just wanted to be there,” she says. “They didn’t care who showed up or if someone would show up.”

While the people we interviewed for this story agree that Disney starting its own event in Brazil is ultimately good for the region, showcasing an interest and an increase in relevance internationally, it didn’t generate the same sort of headlines as D3 2024 in Anaheim, California, which included the debut trailer of Disney’s Snow White, the reveal of Incredibles 3, exclusive in-room footage of Daredevil: Born Again, and other announcements. Referencing CCXP, Orsini says that every booth tends to have an activity to take part in — stand-ins for pictures, quizzes and games to win prizes, escape rooms, and so on. The focus of D23 seemed to be less of an experience and more on selling official merchandise.

“D23 has a lot of potential to do something big and memorable here,” content creator Felipe Basttianon says over email. “With Marvel, many comic book and pop culture fans will definitely have their opinions divided on purchasing tickets to CCXP and D23. In 2023, the Disney stand at CCXP had no activations for gifts, and their main focus was sales of the brand’s plush toys and Lego.”

Asked if the team has ever thought of hosting the event in the U.S., Fabri says that there have been “really strong conversations” over the years with cities that have large Latin American populations. For now, fulfilling this is still a “dream” for the team, and not currently a priority — and July would be out of the question, as they don’t want to compete with Comic-Con in San Diego.

As Brazil and Mexico continue to be the main focus, fans continue to place bets on CCXP’s growth in the region. Being able to see actors in person without the need to travel internationally continues to be a novelty. But as prices continues to rise and new events like D23 are setting foot in Latin America, companies announcing guests and schedules with enough lead time could go a long way.

“My hope for next time [in Mexico] is that CCXP announces artists at least two months before the event,” Villareal says. “Considering how they marketed it as the biggest geek culture event, it was quite empty. You could tell that a lot of people didn’t want to pay for tickets, because I know my country and I’m certain it must have sounded extremely expensive to most.”

Still, even though she wishes for CCXP to have more major announcements to attract international attention, Vieira finds it gratifying for Hollywood actors and directors to visit the region, try Brazilian food, go to tourist spots, and try to speak a little Portuguese during panels. “I believe that CCXP is a gateway to international events in Latin America,” she says. “It may not be exactly as San Diego Comic-Con perhaps, but we as latinos need to be in the sight of those events. We are numerous in social media with huge fandom, so why not try to connect with those fans?”