Ranting to /dev/null

Otakon 2003: Demographics

Read this first.

The demographics of Otakon were actually pretty interesting. First off, I must warn you that all of this information is simply my impression. Otakon does not yet have the demographics for this year's convention, and still doesn't have it for last years, and it's doubtful that they would have given it to me even if they'd had it. So I kind of looked around and made estimates. However, the convention staff were able to tell me that they expect about 20k attendees this year, up a few k from last year.

With that in mind, the first thing I noticed was that there was no gender gap. It was split pretty much down the middle as far as I could tell. As I said, girls were a bit more likely to cosplay, but guys were more likely to cross-dress, so I guess that kind of balances things out a bit.

The second thing I noticed was that certain minorities were pretty well represented, at least for the northeast, while others were pretty much absent. Persons of African descent made up between, I would say, 10 and 15% of the crowd. Hispanics were hardly in evidence, but this may reflect more upon regional demographics than the composition of okatu nationwide. Also, Asians were a pretty small group, making up about 5% of the crowd. This surprised me a bit.

I do have one thought on the racial makeup of the convention. Anime is a hobby that you have to spend money on. The vast majority of anime is not available on television or in movie theaters, and what little is available in those two mediums is generally either pretty awful, targeted to six year olds, or both. If you want to get into anime, you have to either rent or buy the series, and as most Blockbusters have a fairly limited selection - though the selection has increased by at least an order of magnitude over the last decade - you generally have to buy something if you really want to see it. Also, I attended the conference on a Friday in the northeast. That means that only people who are both able to take the time off from work and are able to afford to go to Baltimore were in attendence. As racial minorities tend to be lower on the economic ladder than others, this may explain their lack of representation.

Concerning the age of the crowd: when I showed up in the morning, I would estimate that about 85% of the crowd was between the ages of 18 and 25. But what can you expect on a weekday morning? There were a few kids, accompanied by parents, and a very few middle-aged people, but we're mostly talking those people old enough to go to a conference themselves and young enough to not have responsibilities preventing them from going. However, the middle-aged people there were probably more serious, as they'd taken time away from work to be there. Also, the crowd aged as time went on. By about 7:00, there were a lot more families and middle-aged people present, the numbers growing as work let out across town. I would imagine that the crowd would be more balanced on Saturday and Sunday.

It's hard to judge economic status from standing in line in a crowd, but most of the people looked pretty well off. I mean, they could afford to spend the time and money on those costumes, so they've got at least some disposible income, right? Also, as I said, anime is a fairly expensive hobby, so most of the people there were at least middle-class.

Okay, that's about all I can think of for demographics. Video games will be my next subject.

Posted by ryan at August 9, 2003 09:29 AM | TrackBack