Since the release of the augmented reality (AR) mobile game Pokémon Go in 2016, multiple real-life events and gatherings have been held by its developer, Niantic Labs, outside unofficial player gatherings. Typically, these events offer increased in-game rewards to participating players and often involve cooperation with local organizations or governments.
The common recurring events include the annual Pokémon Go Fest, the Pokémon Go Safari Zone, which has been held in multiple countries, and the monthly "Community Day" events. Larger events attract player counts ranging from thousands to as many as two million participants in a single event. The high concentration of players using mobile devices at these events has caused incidents and network disruptions, ultimately resulting in lawsuits against Niantic.
Niantic estimated that Pokémon Go live events generated approximately $249 million in tourism revenue in 2019, including $120 million in Chicago, $71 million in Montreal, and $56 million in Dortmund.
Background Pokémon Go
Pokémon Go (stylized as Pokémon GO) is an augmented reality mobile game developed by Niantic Labs, based on the Pokémon franchise of Game Freak, which began to release in July 2016. The game centers around catching various Pokémon creatures by navigating the in-game map based on the player's actual location and nearby landmarks. Shortly after its release, the game went viral, breaking multiple records and being installed on millions of devices within weeks of its initial release. With the game's massive initial player base, landmarks would gather crowds of players taking advantage of the "Pokéstops" which provide players with items, to the point where certain landmarks, such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Arlington National Cemetery, explicitly requested players to not play the game within the grounds. On the other hand, the traffic generated by the game was capitalized on by some local businesses.
During the first weeks after the game's release, multiple events and gatherings organized by the players happened across the world. Examples include a single gathering in Sydney days after the game's launch, which attracted over 2,000 players, and a Facebook-based bar crawl in San Francisco for the game collected thousands of responses and a significant number of attendees. Another player gathering at Chicago's Millennium Park gathered around 5,000 players. A zoo in Bristol, which held a Go event, received more attendance than its capacity and had to turn away players.
Several months after release, the player count for the game declined, losing some one-third of its peak of 45 million active users by mid-August 2016. Niantic held the first in-game event—where different Pokémon are encountered in the game and players receive increased rewards—on Halloween of 2016, and the revenue generated by the game spiked during the period. Go had numerous more in-game events that year, including on Thanksgiving Day and Christmas. In one November 2016 event, Niantic increased the spawn rate of the otherwise rare Pokémon Lapras in areas affected by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, intended to help recover tourism in the area.
Shortly after Go's release, during an interview with Recode, Niantic CEO John Hanke stated that Niantic intended to hold official events due to their experience with their previous game, Ingress. He stated that the intent of the events for Go would be to have "people coming together, having an event that moves you through an interesting part of the city so it's part walking tour, part competition, and then having a big get-together at the end where we're announcing winners [and] leaderboards." He also added that the lack of events in the early stages of the game was to ensure that Niantic could handle the expected large crowds at such events.
Ingress events
Prior to the release of Go, Niantic had developed and released a similar AR game called Ingress. A component of Ingress is a series of real-life events held directly by Niantic across multiple cities. Its first post-beta event series, held in 2013, spanned over 9 weeks and involved 39 cities worldwide. The Pokémon Company (TPC) CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara was also an Ingress player, which, according to Hanke, eased cooperation between Niantic and TPC for Go.
One type of Ingress event is known as "Anomalies", where gathered players in a specific location attempt to control the landmarks to score points for their factions, with clear victory objectives. Anomalies can have attendances of upwards of 1,000 players, and Hanke noted in the 2016 Recode interview that an event in Japan gathered over 10,000. Additionally, Ingress also holds monthly "First Saturday" events and #NL1331 meetups (involving a mobile van).
Pokémon Go Fest 2017
In June 2017, Niantic announced a new "Pokémon Go Fest" event, which was held in Chicago's Grant Park on 22 July 2017 as the game's first official real-life event. Tickets to the event, priced at US$20, were sold out within fifteen minutes of their release for sale, despite the details of the event not having been revealed then. Scalpers were reported to have attempted to resell the tickets through resellers for inflated prices. Later, it was revealed that players worldwide and players at Grant Park would contribute towards a catching target, which would unlock rewards.
On the date of the event itself, The Chicago Tribune estimated that 20,000 players attended, some having traveled across the United States or even from abroad. During the event itself, however, mobile networks in the park overloaded, resulting in the attendees being nearly unable to play the game. Niantic acknowledged the issue by around 2 p.m., and its CEO Hanke was booed when speaking on stage in front of the players. In an attempt to alleviate the network pressure, Niantic extended the in-game event area to two miles outside of Grant Park and continued the event throughout the weekend. The event at Grant Park ended on 5 p.m. local time, two hours before it was scheduled. Multiple media outlets called the event a "disaster". A spokesperson from Niantic remarked that the company's staff were "horrified" with the outcome of the event.
Immediately after the event, Niantic refunded the tickets of the attendees, in addition to giving their accounts US$100 worth of in-game currency and the legendary Pokémon Lugia, meant to have been released during the event. Niantic released a blog post by Hanke the following day, blaming both technical issues with the game—which were resolved according to the post—and network oversaturation due to insufficient availability of mobile cell sites. Also, according to the blog post, 7.7 million Pokémon were captured by players in downtown Chicago during the ensuing weekend. In a 2018 interview with The Guardian, Hanke remarked that "the first six hours of [Pokémon Go Fest] were among the most challenging of my professional life."
Later on, a Go Fest attendee, Jonathan Norton, filed a class action lawsuit in the Circuit Court of Cook County against Niantic. The lawsuit was settled after Niantic agreed to pay US$1.575 million to compensate for non-ticket fees such as accommodation and transportation.
2018 Despite the outcome of the 2017 Go Fest, Niantic announced a second Go Fest to be held again in Chicago, at Lincoln Park, on 7 May 2018. Unlike the previous Fest, the event was held across two days—14 and 15 July. The area allocated for the event was larger, with attendees being limited to one of the two days, and additional temporary cellular network facilities were provided by major providers. Like in 2017, tickets for the event sold out rapidly, with tickets running out on the official website within half an hour and scalpers reselling the tickets for increased prices.
During the event, Lincoln Park was decorated with props resembling various biomes that could be found in the game. As part of the event, Pokémon that are normally rare or only found in other parts of the world spawned in the area. Attendees were also given a chance to complete "Research Quests" in-game in order to encounter the Mythical Pokémon Celebi. According to Niantic, 21,000 people attended the event in Lincoln Park, with an additional 180,000 players in Chicago. The event was seen as largely successful, with relatively few technical difficulties in contrast to the 2017 event.
2019 A third Go Fest event was announced on 4 April 2019. The 2019 event, unlike the preceding ones, was to be held in three separate cities—Chicago (Grant Park, held between 13 and 16 June), Dortmund (Westfalenpark, held between 4–7 July) and Yokohama (Yamashita Park, Rinko Park, and Akarenga Park, held between 6–12 August). In the lead-up to the events, Niantic held a "Pokémon Go Snapshot Challenge", centered around the game's augmented reality camera feature, with the contest's main prizes being trips to the Go Fest events. Tickets for the Chicago event were distributed through a random drawing that followed in-game registration.
Niantic reported around 60,000 attendees at the Chicago event. The reported player count in Dortmund was 85,000 in the Westfalenpark across the four days, and 150,000 players participated in Yokohama.
2020–2023 In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which limited the capacity for in-person gatherings, Niantic opted for a fully online Go Fest, holding the event worldwide and enabling players to participate in the event at home. It was held on 25—26 July 2020.
The 2021 Go Fest was held on 17–18 July, with a lower ticket price of $5. With the pandemic's impact having lessened in parts of the world, the 2021 Go Fest involved at-home events still, but also a number of real-life gatherings in 21 cities across the United States and Europe. Unlike events in 2017–2019, which saw Niantic set up many Pokémon-themed builds across the parks, the 2021 events were described as having "a lighter touch", with the locations intended to be more spread out. Each of the 21 locations was still staffed by Niantic personnel. A special "raid egg" display was set up at Maggie Daley Park in Chicago, in reference to the first Go Fest held in the city.
The global part of the 2022 Go Fest was held 4–5 June, with a finale event on 27 August. A pink flower around the logo hinted that the mythical Pokémon Shaymin would make its Pokémon Go debut. It was officially confirmed later. There were also in-person events in three cities on different weekends: 1–3 July in Berlin, 22–24 July in Seattle, and 5–7 August in Sapporo.
The 2023 Go Fest had three cities with in-person events: 4–6 August in London and Osaka and 18–20 August in New York City, as well as a global event 26–27 August.
Pokémon Go Safari Zone
On 12 July 2017, Niantic announced "Safari Zone" events across several cities in Europe at shopping centers operated by Unibail-Rodamco, held in August and September 2017. The events, where otherwise region-limited Pokémon could be found among others, required registration and had a player limit. For example, the event in Amsterdam was limited to 2,000 players, though unregistered players would still be able to play with increased rewards within the city. However, due to the failure of the 2017 Go Fest event, Niantic delayed some Safari Zone events to fall that year.
Later in 2017, another Safari Zone event was held in Tottori Prefecture, Japan, at the Tottori Sand Dunes between 24 and 26 November. According to the local government, 89,000 people attended the event, which generated around US$16 million in travel and tourism revenue. In the lead-up to the event, Niantic brought several influencers on a tour around Japan as a campaign, which was named Pokémon Go Travel.