GalaxyCon Louisville

I’m coming to you today as a person, not a company, a Louisville native with conflicted feelings. I’m Sandy Martin, and my husband and I are the team behind GalaxyCon. There are so many reasons that we believe GalaxyCon could thrive in Louisville, and we were eager to bring another edition to you again in 2020, but the KICC has made it nearly impossible to return.

When we first came to Louisville, we placed dates on hold for 3 years working a week earlier each year towards early November dates. We were surprised this year to find out we could not have those dates for 2020. They’d been given to what the facility considered a higher value client. We found a weekend in late October that was available at KICC, but the facility raised the bar on how many people from out of town we’d have to draw in order to proceed with those dates too.

We always have to attract a large number of people from out of town. This is how cities make money. We guarantee to fill a certain number of hotel rooms everywhere we go. But Louisville gave us a stretch goal to secure available dates without assurances we could even come back in 2021.

We have thriving events in Richmond, VA, Raleigh, NC, and Minneapolis, MN, and those cities have been up front about the goals we must reach to be offered terms which are common for events like ours. These goals are also much lower than the stretch goal we got from KICC.

It is for this reason that we will not return to Louisville in 2020. If economic conditions change in the coming years, it’s possible we would return to Louisville, but we want to let you know of our plans now as you consider your 2020 geek calendar.