Status Active Location(s) Baltimore, Maryland Inaugurated June 2011 | Genre Multi-genre Country U.S. | |
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Venue Baltimore Convention Center | ||
BronyCon is an annual fan convention held on the east coast of the United States for fans of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, among them adult and teenage fans of the show, who call themselves bronies. Eight events have occurred to date, with the most recent one in July 2016 drawing in 7,609 attendees. On October 20, 2014, BronyCon chairman Josh Dean had announced plans for the convention all the way through 2025.
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BronyCon was previously styled as BroNYCon, as its first three conventions were held in New York City. It dropped the 'NYC' capitalization for its fourth event, which was held in nearby Secaucus, New Jersey. The 2013 event marked the convention's move to Baltimore, Maryland, as well as a shift from twice a year to once a year. A 501(c)(3) non-profit entity, Lunar Solis Corp., has since been created to operate the convention and manage its charity efforts. Upon news of BronyCon's departure from the NYC area, a number of retired BronyCon staffers (including its original creator) created a new, separate convention ("Big Apple Ponycon", later renamed to simply "Ponycon") to serve the NYC metro area. The two conventions are not related.
History
My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic first aired on the Hub on October 10, 2010, as part of Hasbro's intent to promote the fledgling network and market its new line of My Little Pony toys. Though a critical success with the target demographic of young girls and their parents, it attracted an unexpected audience of teenage and adult fans, primarily male, originating from the 4chan imageboard. The fandom adopted the term "brony", a portmanteau of "bro" and "pony", and became a highly participatory culture representing New Sincerity, creating artwork, fan fiction, music, mashup videos, and other media. The show's creators, including executive producers Lauren Faust, Jayson Thiessen, Christophe Toverski, the writers and voice actors, Hasbro and the Hub have sought to embrace the brony community, communicating openly with the community and placing subtle nods to the fandom within the show and licensed property.
One facet of the older fan base was to create local meetups to socialize about the show and other elements. BronyCon grew out of the local meetups in the New York metropolitan area; it was founded in 2011 by fan Jessica Blank ("Purple Tinker"), who views the brony movement as a "men's version of feminism". Following the success of an "inaugural NYC brony meet" in Little Italy on May 28, 2011, which was attended by over 30 people, the first BronyCon took place in Midtown Manhattan in June 2011 and drew 100 attendees. The second, held in September 2011, had been able to secure the show's current supervising director Jayson Thiessen as a guest, leading to an increase to 300 people attending the event. The third convention, held in January 2012, included three of the voice actresses from the show, drawing at least 700 attendees and requiring the move to a large meeting center.
The fourth BronyCon, held on June 30, 2012 and July 1, 2012, had early on been able to arrange for several of the voice actors and show writers to attend. The staff was able to arrange for Faust and actor John de Lancie, who voiced the villain Discord for two episodes, to be guests of honor. Upon announcement of these high-profile guests, interest in the convention sharply increased. The staff moved the location to the Meadowlands Exposition Center in New Jersey and expanded the event over two days, allowing the convention to hold more than 4,000 attendees, while live-streaming panels to an estimated 3,500 additional viewers.
Andrew Benage, BronyCon's media liaison, estimated that BronyCon's 2013 event would attract between 6,000 and 8,000 attendees, including a larger proportion of international fans. On November 10, 2012, it was announced on the BronyCon Facebook page that the BronyCon 2013 event would be held at the Baltimore Convention Center and the Hilton Baltimore Hotel in Baltimore, Maryland on August 2, 2013 to August 4, 2013. The 2013 event drew 8,407 attendees and hosted panels of voice actors and writers from the show as well as the creators of the My Little Pony comic series.
The sixth BronyCon convention ran from August 1–3, 2014 in Baltimore, and drew more than 9,600 attendees; the 2015 BronyCon event ran at the Baltimore Convention Center for August 7–9, 2015 and drew 10,011 attendees, an increase from 2014. Visit Baltimore, the city's tourism board, estimates that BronyCon brings in $5.5 million in revenue to local businesses.
The eighth BronyCon convention ran from July 8–10, 2016 in Baltimore and drew 7,609 attendees, a decrease of roughly 24% from the previous year.
Convention chairman Josh Dean confirmed over Twitter that BronyCon has dates set through 2025.
In 2015, the Baltimore Business Journal reported in an article regarding BronyCon that BronyCon has a long-term contract to hold BronyCon at the Baltimore Convention Center until BronyCon 2019. The venue for BronyCon 2020 to 2025 currently, as of August 12, 2015 remains unknown.
In 2016, Visit Baltimore, Baltimore's convention and tourism agency released their FY2016 annual report that states on page 38 that BronyCon will be held in Baltimore in 2020 with a start date of July 28, 2020, 2021 with a start date of August 10, 2021 and 2022 with a start date of August 2, 2022. As of November 18, 2016 it's unknown what venue BronyCon will be held in for 2023 to 2025.
Format
Since moving from the smaller venues, BronyCon typically offers upwards of one hundred panels and activities for attendees; many panels are dedicated to the convention's guests of honor but includes panels and presentations from members of the fanbase on art, music, writing, video productions, and other community aspects. The convention also provides a number of activity rooms, such as for art, video games, cosplay, and with the introduction of the official Enterplay collectible card game based on the show, rooms for card game tourneys. The convention has included a musical concert over one or two nights called "Bronypalooza", featuring fan musicians performing for the attendees, at times joined by some of the guests of honors. The convention attracts a large number of freelance vendors (over 200 at the 2014 convention, for example), selling handmade art, along with selected retail vendors with licensed My Little Pony merchandise.
The convention is designed to be family-friendly, and has drawn upward of 10% of its attendees from children under 14 who also enjoy the show. While the brony fandom tends to be mostly males (85% based on a 2013 unofficial survey), BronyCon also attracts a larger percentage of female fans; 34% of the attendees for the 2014 BronyCon were female.
Location and dates
BronyCon is due to remain at the Baltimore Convention Center through 2019. The future venue for BronyCon 2020 to 2025 is unknown as of August 12, 2015.
In 2016, Visit Baltimore, Baltimore's convention and tourism agency released their FY2016 annual report that states on page 38 that BronyCon will be held in Baltimore in 2020 with a start date of July 28, 2020, 2021 with a start date of August 10, 2021 and 2022 with a start date of August 2, 2022. As of November 18, 2016 it's unknown what venue BronyCon will be held in for 2023 to 2025.
Documentaries
BronyCon has attracted the attention of filmmakers as to document the brony phenomenon. One such documentary is Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony. Prior to the 4th BronyCon, documentary filmmaker Michael Brockhoff started a Kickstarter-funded project to create a documentary about the brony culture to be filmed at the convention, tentatively titled BronyCon: The Documentary. He was joined by actor John de Lancie, who voiced the character of Discord from the first two episodes "The Return of Harmony" from the second season; Faust had envisioned Discord based on de Lancie's earlier role as Q from Star Trek. De Lancie had not initially considered the role to be significant, but after airing of the episode, discovered himself to be awash in enthusiastic fans of the show praising his performance. Since then, he had become fascinated by the brony culture, comparing it to the growth of fans from the original Star Trek series, and signed on to be an executive producer for this documentary.
Brockhoff initially sought for $60,000 to create the documentary but this was quickly met. Brockhoff adjusted the goal part way through, looking to secure $200,000, which would allow him to film at the homes of fans of the show and elsewhere outside of the convention, and to bring aboard both Faust and Strong as co-executive producers along with de Lancie. This goal was also met well before the end of the pledge period, and so an additional target of $280,000 was set to allow the filmmakers to get additional coverage on two European conventions (GalaCon and B.U.C.K.) and perform more remote coverage of specific aspects of the brony culture. The funding drive ended with more than $340,000 in pledges, making it the second-largest film-based project to be funded on Kickstarter.
Brockhoff and his team have announced plans to rerelease the documentary with additional content after its release to Kickstarter backers in a film package, Bronies, that will be available for the public through retail and digital storefronts as well as for showings at film festivals, to be completed by 2013. After an initial showing at Equestria LA in Los Angeles in early November 2012, the producers opted to change the title of the film to Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony, reflecting the larger scope of the project.
A separate documentary film, A Brony Tale, is a Canadian-American production directed by Brent Hodge. After collaborating with her band Hey Ocean at CBC Radio 3, Hodge met Vancouver voice actress Ashleigh Ball. When Ashleigh told Brent about e-mails she was getting from fans that called themselves "bronies", Hodge immediately began production. The film focuses on the brony phenomenon as well as follows the experience of Ashleigh Ball, one of the show's voice actresses, as she receives an invitation to the January 2012 BronyCon and decides to attend. The film premiered at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival where it received critical acclaim and received a theatrical release on July 8, 2014. The film received critical acclaim, holding a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and is currently available through digital downloads, DVD and on Blu-Ray.
"No crowdfunding. Self-funded through Hodgee Films. It started out as just a fun project I wanted to do and really snowballed and turned into something. I'm good friends with the main subject Ashleigh Ball, so filming didn't have to be such an ordeal. We would just hang out and create stuff. I couldn't wait for any funding or even the time to fill out the forms for grant applications. I didn't want anyone else to have a say with the planning of this one. I knew I just needed to film it," said Hodge in an interview with IndieWire.
The 2014 BronyCon was featured on a Season 4 episode of AMC's Comic Book Men.
The 2015 BronyCon is featured on the WWE Network on the "WWE Culture Shock" series hosted by Corey Graves, former NXT Tag Team Champion (with Adrian Neville) and #1 Contender for the NXT Championship. The 2015 BronyCon was also featured on the Channel 4 programme World of Weird broadcast on 23 September 2015.