Gamescom: Opening Night Live ‘watched by 500,000 people’

The inaugural Gamescom: Opening Night Live event attracted an audience of over 500,000 simultaneous viewers, according to Gamescom organiser Koelnmesse.

Gamescom 2019 kicked off with the new live streamed event, which was produced by Geoff Keighley and Kimmie H. Kim, executive producers of annual industry show The Game Awards.

Featuring new content and product announcements, it aired on Monday August 19, ahead of the trade fair running in Cologne from August 20-24.

According to Koelnmesse, “host and producer Geoff Keighley inspired more than 1,500 visitors on site and millions of people worldwide. More than 500,000 spectators watched simultaneously in the live stream”.

Gamescom 2019 itself drew in a record 373,000 visitors (up from 370,000 in 2018) from more than 100 countries, 31,300 of them trade visitors.

The number of exhibiting companies rose by 11% to over 1,150, in an expanded area of 218,000 square metres.

Koelnmesse also confirmed that Gamescom 2020 will take place from Tuesday August 25 to Saturday August 29, 2020.

Koelnmesse CEO Gerald Böse said: “With ‘gamescom: Opening Night Live’, we have taken a decisive step in the direction of becoming an international platform for new products. At the same time, the show was also the starting point for our new gamescom now digital offering, with which we offered the digital community additional access to gamescom.

“Thanks to the successful combination of a unique gaming offering on the grounds, supplemental formats and the extension to the online world, we have further strengthened gamescom as a 360-degree experience event and a leading communication platform. There have never been this many innovations at gamescom – never have we reached so many people as in this year.”

You can check out all of VGC’s Gamescom 2019 news coverage here. We also published a collection of the best Gamescom 2019 trailers featuring over 100 videos.