According to Gamescom, a one-minute trailer in Opening Night Live is worth €125,000 (about $127,600). It costs that much for “partners” (a.k.a. sponsors) to reserve a slot in Geoff Keighley’s opening webcast, which last year lasted for two hours and featured more than 30 games.
Sponsors paying to have their games highlighted in a significant showcase like Opening Night Live is not rare. You may have noticed some games that keep coming up in a clear determined marketing effort if you’ve watched a few live streams of this kind (I’m looking at you, Blanks Block Party).
The cost of that sponsorship is unusual because Gamescom posts the costs for Opening Night Live trailer spots on a B2B portal that is open to the public, as noticed by Start Menu’s Lex Luddy. A 30-second spot costs €85,000, while a 90-second spot, which costs €165,000, offers the best value.
Inquiring about the pricing and the proportion of sponsored portions in Opening Night Live, I got in touch with Keighley and Gamescom. Gamescom declined to provide a particular response but did note that most of the titles presented in the event are free. The majority of the games are editorial inclusions at other events, like our own PC Gaming Show, and others are sponsored by businesses. According to my colleague Evan Lahti, PC Gamer’s Global Editor-in-Chief, these events cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce because they need to pay for performers, cameras, studio time, motion graphics, crew, travel, and, as we did one year, an animatronic robot to co-host the show.
Even though the cost of a spot on Opening Night Live may seem high, it is not the complete price of attending a significant trade show like Gamescom. This year, it’s exclusively accessible to “partners” who are already present at the costly in-person Gamescom event. A “terrace stand” on the exhibition floor, which is the least expensive choice for displaying a game to consumers, costs €149.50 per square meter of space, though you receive a small discount if your stand occupies more than 500 or 1,000 square meters.
