GamesMarkt

Business

204,000 people on four days: This year’s Spiel Essen from 3 to 6 October, the world’s biggest fair for board games, has sold out all tickets. It is the first time that not only the weekend tickets for Saturday and Sunday, but also the tickets for Thursday and Friday have been sold out entirely. 

Visitors from over 80 nations came to Essen. With 923 exhibitors presenting over 1,500 new products, 52 countries from all continents were represented.

The Spiel 202 has also been a record area-wise. This year, the board game fair filled 68,500 square metres in the six halls used by Messe Essen. This made it the largest Spiel of all time. "When we had to open a waiting list in June because we couldn't fulfil all the requests from exhibitors immediately, we knew that this year would be even bigger in terms of space. We had to do a lot of puzzling to coordinate the requests for more play space and new exhibitor requests," says Carol Rapp, CEO of the organising Merz Verlag.


Spiel Essen has Sold Out for the First Time in 2024