About 50,000 people are attending PokémonXP and the 2026 Pokémon World Championships in San Francisco, California. Despite the huge turnout, The Pokémon Company International is aware of the disappointment among fans who either weren’t chosen for particular exclusive activities, or for tickets to the convention at all, and are already considering ways to improve. In a group interview, Chris Brown, Director, Global Esports and Events Producer at The Pokémon Company International, commented on the unique challenges producing an event with this much demand invites, how they may improve processes next time, and their plans for the future.
This year, demand far outnumbered supply, Brown said, with more than 130,000 people throwing their names into the hat for a 3-day or single-day badge to PokémonXP – more than twice the number of people who’d be granted entrance, which also includes competitors and their families.
“Basically, anytime your demand well outstrips your supply, the sort of interest list into lottery is the only real way you can handle that,” Brown said.
Brown described that this is true across the events industry, and if it were set up as a “first come, first serve” online purchasing system, the system would crash and people would error out, making it a worse experience for fans that’s basically a random chance, anyway.
“The only thing I can do from an event operator's perspective is think about, how do we increase supply over time? From a system's perspective, there's honestly not a better system [than interest list into lottery] for that.”
Over the years, more and more activities have been included in the Pokémon World Championships for fans who weren’t competing. One of these, for example, was the chance to get an autograph from an artist–which about “300ish,” or .03%, of attendees were able to participate in. Brown said this year a little over 2,000 people were able to participate in a special event activity, like autograph sessions and workshops. This is a small number compared to the more than 50,000 people who likely signed up for a chance to participate, but Brown said it’s about the same percentage as have been able to participate in these activities at Worlds in previous years.
Brown said they’re already considering changes to the system in the future, by, for example, asking fans to include their priority when choosing activities.
“There are some obvious things we can probably do to make it better, but, there's a philosophical problem, though, of just the supply is below what the demand level is. How do you manage that?” Brown asked. “And if anyone has suggestions, I'm always all ears. But I don't think anyone in the industry's really cracked that. And it's just part of the challenge.”
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.ign.com/articles/the-pokmon-company-on-pokmonxps-lottery-system-long-lines-and-limited-access-to-workshops
