Convention Drama: Should This Play Out In Public?

What happens when guest appearances are cancelled for a Con – publicly?

Two sides to every story: a convention guest cancellation

Over the weekend I spotted a post online from a very disgruntled celebrity agency, on the Galactic Productions, LLC Facebook page:

This post alone would panic any conventioneer. If I had booked tickets for this event it would certainly ring alarm bells. This post is accusing the company of using the images of the guests, even though the company itself has contacted the agency to cancel the guests. Morally, this is wrong. However, the event responded publicly on their page to the comment:

Of course, I wanted to reserve judgement until I saw the official explanatory post on the Super Power Con UK Facebook page:

This is a very valid response; if ticket sales aren’t great, then the con will be out of pocket. We’ve seen this before with other convention companies.

My view:

I’m not saying I know everything about how the celeb bookings work behind the scenes.  However, I’m pretty sure that there are clauses in the contracts which allow convention guest cancellation on either side. This, in my eyes, should be hashed out privately.

There is fault on both sides here. The convention company should have announced the cancellations as soon as they happened. However, the booking company making a very public post about this is also wrong. This will tarnish the company’s reputation, and put people off booking this event.

What do you all think? Should this sort of convention guest cancellation be done in private, or should they be allowed to hash this out in a public forum?

Sarah J Wilson – Convention Queen & Reporter