Animeverse Chattanooga 2026
The deets
Where: Chattanooga, TN
When: Late August
Table Cost: $250, $45 for extra exhibitor badges
Attendance: estimated 1000
The space
The entirety of the event took place in a single hall of the Chattanooga convention center. The facility is really nice, and load in was easy and accessible. There is no free parking though, and rates at the convention center/hotel Marriot’s parking deck are not cheap.
The market
There are some issues with vetting of vendors and artists. A staff member admitted that no one took notes when accepting artist and vendor applications, so there were several vendors with similar items and thus were in direct competition with each other. A crochet drop shipper was placed in the artist alley section and was not removed until Sunday morning after being reported, and another crochet drop shipper was still present in the vendor section. In the vendor section there were way too many funko pop vendors, and a good number of 3D print booths, however the 3D print booths did all have different things so this isn’t as big of an issue. Many vendors, including artists who bought vendor spaces, have expressed frustration on lack of sales with several admitting to having not even made back their booth costs, let alone parking, hotel, food, and other expenses necessary to even be at this event. There also were probably a dozen or so no-shows, leaving many empty tables that the artists eventually filled in or moved around to when no staff member was keeping tabs on any of this.
The audience
This audience skewed a lot younger than we’re used to seeing, but given many of the guests were voice actors for cartoons and anime, that’s probably a pretty big factor as to why. Lots of attendees were in cosplay, which is great to see, but it’s a shame that the only cosplay focused activity was only on Sunday and at the end of all the other programming. We feel really bad for the attendees because aside from shopping and the main stage panels, there is nothing else for them to do. The guests didn’t even stay the whole event either, and none of the panels were announced across the hall when they were starting.
The sales
We made under 2.5x table cost, HOWEVER, we did pay over $50 for an extra exhibitor badge so that pushed us to making under 2x table.
For this 2-day event our total time investment was 15 hours of active vending, 2 hours of combined set-up and break-down time (total of 17 hours).
Items that sold the best were prints, stickers, and journals. We sold a two sketch card commissions, including one for an author who was super nice! Most people paid with card rather than cash, though there was a good amount of cash.
The rest
When we arrived to set up the day before the event, we got the last vendor badges they had. Many other artists who set up day-of did not get proper badges. The person checking us in didn’t even seem to know how many badges we were supposed to have, so we have a sneaking suspicion that they either didn’t check to see how many badges had been purchased, OR they just handed out badges to anyone who asked. There were vendors present with several family members behind their tables and I find it hard to believe they paid an extra $50 for their children to have badges.
The check-in was so poorly handled that when the event opened it took forever for people to actually get into the hall. So we basically sat around not having any people wandering through because they were all stuck in the bag check line.
Unfortunately this seems to be yet another celebrity petting zoo where the event is counting on people coming for signings over anything else. There are no fan-run panels or activities for attendees, and even with the guests they barely did anything fun with the whole anime x wrestling idea.
We would have loved to have seen wrestlers cosplaying and doing mock fights or at least smack talking each other. They could have easily gotten a WWE-style announcer on the mic for letting people know when panels were happening or MCing the cosplay show. There’s just so much they could have done to push the theme and they just didn’t. The wrestling aspect feels like a second thought which sucks cause this organization runs much bigger shows in other cities which we have heard more positive things about.
Towards the end of the event, the organizers were trying to get people to pay for their tables for next year upfront. That is wild to us considering how many folks did not do well financially for this event. But they also said prices for tables would be INCREASING next year. That’s ridiculous. This show is not worth the current table price, let alone an increase.
Pros
Venue is very nice and accessible
Chattanooga has some AMAZING food within walking distance of the venue
Cons
Poor curation of vendors (too many people selling the same things or people who shouldn’t have been in artist alley being there)
Not nearly enough attendees to justify the table cost
Not all vendors who paid for badges received them
Basically a celebrity petting zoo with very few free activities to keep attendees in the space all day
Paid parking