Following tireless rumors that the world's largest comics and pop culture convention would move to Los Angeles or Anaheim, Comic-Con International confirmed via press release on Thursday that the show, better known as San Diego Comic-Con, will remain in downtown San Diego through 2015.

"We are grateful for the tireless efforts all three cities put into to their proposals," said David Glanzer, Comic-Con's director of marketing and public relations. "In the end, we feel this decision is the best for all those who attend Comic-Con and for the organization itself. We are happy that the community has worked with us to ensure that we remain here."
The idea of moving Comic-Con from San Diego to another city with larger exhibit and lodging facilities is discussed by fans and industry pundits on an annual basis, a consequence of the show's crowded floors and the obvious lack of hotel rooms in the relatively downtown San Diego area. The reality of such a change became more tangible in recent years, however, after practicalities forced SDCC to cap its attendance at 125,000, causing the show to sell out and the yearly rush for all but criminally overpriced hotel rooms to become an industry nightmare shared by fan and pro alike.

Competition for Comic-Con's business heated up earlier this year when the city of San Diego made public its offer of $500,000 in hotel tax revenue over years to subsidize the cost of shuttling attendees to and from the convention center. For its part, Los Angeles representative LA Inc. -- the organization that administers a massive downtown Los Angeles complex that includes LA Live and the LA Convention Center -- implied rather strongly in a CBR interview that it'd backed up the proverbial truck to CCI's front door, with Sign On San Diego reporting a rumor that Los Angeles offered Comic-Con convention space at no cost.

The same Sign on San Diego article confirms what many have long suspected, that CCI always wished to remain in San Diego and that doing so depended on the ever contentious hotel situation, and that new contracts have been signed with 64 nearby hotels to commit them to "prescribed, discounted rates" through 2015. Most auspiciously, around 14,000 additional Comic-Con hotel rooms will be available between 2013 and 2015.

David Glanzer:

We've always had a desire to stay in San Diego, and we had three amazing proposals," said Comic-Con spokesman David Glanzer. "It was obviously a very difficult decision, one born out by the amount of time it's taken to make that decision. But in the end San Diego was able to address a lot of our concerns. It's never been a secret we'd hoped to stay here, but the real challenge was that those who want to attend the event can afford to attend, in terms of size and space and cost.

A press conference is scheduled for Friday, October 1 at 11:45AM PST at the San Diego Convention Center, where more details are likely to be revealed.

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