After SDCC’s attempt at bringing their entire convention online last month, DC and Warner Bros. staged their own fan event online on August 22nd. They pulled all of the programming that they would have announced at SDCC (and that would have made the online version of the con more popular and likely would have helped it trend online), and saved it for their own event. This event was supposed to include a lot more content running simultaneously, but they changed the programming to run over two non-consecutive days instead. Day two will happen in September and will include fewer big releases and more fan-centric content.

The question is: was this successful? Well, if we go by viewing numbers and popularity on social media, then yes, this event was super successful. Variety reports that there were 22 million views for the event and that it was trending on Twitter and YouTube. This makes sense given the number of celebrities involved, the big trailers and teaser-trailers released, and the specially promoted hashtag created to be used on Twitter just for the event.

The success of the event was not simply top-down, however. DC/WB really did have the audience/fandom at the centre of this campaign. The event showcased fan art, cosplay — human and pets, and fan tattoos between panels. Every panel featured a number of questions submitted by fans, often in video form. And one of the most popular segments based on my personal experience on Twitter was the segment discussing the release of the Zach Snyder cut of Justice League — an entirely fan-led campaign and a segment featuring the very fans who started that movement.

The other really big difference between DC Fandome and SDCC and other recent online fan conventions was the format — many of the panels were still very much zoom-style discussions/conversations, but DC/WB took control of the backgrounds and set up the livestream to make the entire event seamless and more like an experience than a series of work meetings. You actually wanted to keep the stream on live even when you weren’t that interested in the panel — possibly due to the fact that most panels were quite short. In many ways it felt like watching live tv which I haven’t done in many years having cut the cord in 2008?

Overall, then, I would suggest that this was a positive experience as a fan. I enjoyed myself through most of the event and am excited for a number of upcoming productions coming out of these production houses. As an academic, I can see how this really changes everything. This moves certain fan events completely under corporate control — and I do mean control — where the studio decides what you watch/do and when you watch/do it. That will change the convention experience entirely. Likewise, now that DC/WB and other corporations have seen how successful this can be — and how much (potentially) easier/cheaper (sending a box of material to a bunch of panelists around the world has to be cheaper than flying everyone to SDCC during the most expensive time of the year!), as well as how much more wide-reaching it is, there is the potential for corporations to pull out of large fan conventions like SDCC, NYCC, Fan Expo in Toronto. If this happens, those conventions will change their scope and become more like the smaller conventions, but also end up working more like SDCC@ Home this year — they will be “less successful” in terms of social media reach and “profit.” This is not necessarily a bad thing, but these conventions need to be ready for that change.