You can see the release here.
The numbers offer an interesting comparison to 2019. I got the 2019 figures here.
This year there were "over 35,000" unique attendees. In 2019 there were "nearly 70,000". So there were a bit over half as many people this year. That seems in line with a stated attendance cap of "about 50%" (source here). I didn't hear anything about badges selling out, though, and one of the emails I got from Gen Con during the con stated that there were plenty of Sunday badges still available.
This year there were 320 exhibitors, versus 538 in 2019. During the con I noticed some booths that were empty, but still had a card with the name of the vendor on the back drape. Does anyone know if those would have been counted among the 320?
In any case, they were short over 200 vendors. And most of the replacement vendors had pretty small booths, while some of the missing companies typically had pretty big footprints. It's little wonder it seemed like there was a lot of unused space in the exhibit hall.
I find it interesting that the biggest drop was in events. In 2019 there were 19,600 events. In 2021 there were "more than 6,500" (just barely, I see 6,502 in an unfiltered search). So there were half the attendees, but a third of the events as 2019. No wonder it was hard to find events!
It's not really surprising that the event count was disproportionately low. Paizo and True Dungeon account for a lot of events. Independent GM's were shut out or forced to join together into larger groups. Some did join a group, but I'm sure some did not. And with reduced attendance and increased uncertainty it was no doubt difficult for some of the groups to find enough GM's.
Overall I didn't see anything too surprising in the press release. Rather, it reinforced the impressions I had of the convention with some solid numbers.
What do you think?