What? This isn’t Birmingham!
Being a local bod who likes the games of board, you have likely been to the UK Games Expo based at the NEC in Birmingham. If not, you should. There are only two other board game conventions that even compare to it globally, one of a similar size in USA and the Daddy of them all, SPIEL Essen in Germany, well, it just so happens that I’ve just come back from there so I thought, why not write a little blog about it and comparing it to our local UKGE?
First things first (always a good idea, it gets confusing otherwise) I am not flush enough or well enough organised to get there by myself, luckily I work part-time for a local board game publisher and I just happen to be quite good at dealing with people so working on their stall at big conventions is part of my thing with them. I have to pause here and thank Simon Milburn and Ayden Lowther of Dranda Games for having faith in me and giving me the chance to work within the publishing side of the board game world. It’s opened many doors and given me many opportunities. In due course we’ll be adding these two legends as well as others to our PEOPLE page under ‘Game Makers’.
Right, now on to business. UKGE vs SPIEL… Sounds to me like an excuse for a series of graphs! Yay!
Lovely, lovely graphs…
Clearly Spiel beats UKGE hands down on all of these 5 statistics although some more than others, lets go through them in more detail…
4 days of Spiel vs 3 days of UKGE? That really needs no explanation. Spiel opens on a Thursday, as an exhibitor we flew over Tuesday afternoon and got to the halls for the Wednesday morning to do the set up, there was also a Press show on the Wednesday too so we split the team, half on set-up and the other half attending the Press event. The full team arrived before kick off on Thursday morning and some of the hard to find games across the convention were sold out in minutes.
Compare that with attending the UKGE, travel time is much reduced as we’re local to Birmingham (obviously) so we’d set-up on Thursday and attend the Press event that evening, we do like to get somewhere to stay near the NEC though, saves travel time everyday.
Visitors attending each convention are clearly different… 230K for Spiel and 88K for UKGE. The UKGE does give a different figure that Spiel does not though, they provide info on ‘unique’ visitors too, this is given at 51K, sadly there is nothing to compare this with for Spiel so I’ve ignored it. If you factor in the days open then things are a bit closer (yet not much), I know it’s not realistic but the figure of ‘average visitors per day’ comes up with 57.5K for Spiel vs 29.3K for UKGE.
The next figure is surprisingly similar at both events…. 997 exhibitors for Spiel from 55 countries and 800 across 30 countries for the UKGE. There are many, many, many small independent UK exhibitors at UKGE compared to Spiel, this makes the UKGE look much better in this stat than all the others.
Next comes up the biggest difference between the two shows, games. Spiel is very much set up for new releases as it has been for a long time. UKGE not so much, you’ll get new stuff but hardly any titles actually launching. The best way of assessing this is definitely from BoardGameGeek’s Preview lists with over four times the number listed for Spiel compared to the UKGE.
Lastly comes size in square metres. This is another odd one, I’ve used tradehall size for this as it’s the best direct comparison. 81.2K for Spiel vs 44K for the UKGE, it’s interesting to average that out for the exhibitors… that makes approximately 81 square metres per exhibitor at Spiel and 55 square metres at the UKGE. There are a LOT of larger exhibitors at Spiel using a lot of demo space up.
What the UKGE has that Spiel doesn’t is gaming space, the full listed used space by the UKGE is 65K, that’s a whooping extra 21K of space, some for gaming some for queueing and also room for the Bring and Buy, all things Spiel doesn’t have. They don’t need a ticket hall though as by the time they opened their doors they had sold out of tickets!
The Spiel map, there’s one above each door so it’s easy to navigate!
The UKGE has room to grow, Spiel is almost at maximum size…. They have filled the whole convention apart from the weird Hall 1A that is under Hall 1 and the GrugaHalle that is next door although that’s where the Press event was this year.
So the biggest difference has to be use of space… There is clearly no space for free-gaming at Spiel, this is as it’s really a trade convention and has never aimed to give space for people to play games. This means that every hotel across the whole of Essen is used as gaming space in the evenings… pop in any of the many hotels across the city during the long weekend of the convention and you’ll find people popping games and playing the latest releases, it’s a different vibe but you’ll very much be able to wander the hotel restaurants and chat to people about what they’re playing and maybe get a game on or at least be tempted enough to add it to your list for the next day (if it’s not already sold out!)
I’ve drawn a line above as now I’m gonna speak of vibes.
Spiel, it’s insane. So much to try and the largest array of exhibitors of any board game convention with so many coming from much further afield, if you want the hard to find stuff from far flung places then you have to do Spiel. Do NOT expect to be able to sit down and just play what you bought it’s ‘all about games’ as they advertise it but not all about playing them. Despite this, everyone there is a gamer and the vibes 100% reflect that, it may be packed but this wonderful hobby brings everyone there. I’ve been going 4 years now and I get recognised by people, I’m part of the community now. Could I tell you who they are? Not at all! If I had the money and time I would go as a visitor if I could but being part of the exhibitors that provide such a show holds a special place in my heart.
UKGE? I love it. I’ve been going since around 2012 (I think… I recall going to at least one at the Clarendon Suite on Hagley Road!). They have made a different kind of expo, not based on new games and releases but on the hobby itself. Spiel has no free gaming space, Spiel has no Playtest area, Spiel has no Bring & Buy… They’re both worth doing at least once but the UKGE is the best of Birmingham and although I adore Essen and the crowds and tiring craziness of it all, the UKGE is just as worthy as a gaming destination!
Bring on 4th of June 2027 and see you there!
