Happy New Year! As soon as I wrap up the first SBJ newsletter of 2026, I’ll be diving into one of my New Year’s traditions — starting a new run in Out of the Park Baseball. Drop me a line if you have any gaming traditions that you like to kick off the new year with.
Tixr’s first BlizzCon melds its learnings from over a decade of sports and gaming events
After a two-year hiatus, BlizzCon is back for 2026 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Southern California. The celebration of all things Blizzard Entertainment runs Sept. 12-13, and for the first time, Tixr is handling the convention’s ticketing duties for Activision Blizzard.
SBJ has long covered Tixr’s work in sports, such as its recent MLS deals with the Earthquakes and the Dynamo. Its competitors in sports include Sports Illustrated Tickets and another high-profile startup, Jump (the firm that Timberwolves co-owners Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez founded).
But Tixr has an advantage some of its competitors lack — it has a thriving business in gaming events, working with DreamHack for events across the globe and handling other events for Riot Games, Supercell and IGN. It also handles music events, dealing with industry juggernauts such as Ticketmaster.
Working among so many industry segments “is difficult, especially when you’re building a product that’s nuanced across many different live event industries, and that’s part of the challenge, but it’s also a real differentiator for Tixr,” said CRO Patrick Bradley.
Tixr gained valuable experience ahead of BlizzCon by handling tickets for the Warcraft 30th anniversary tour, which spanned six cities across four continents in 2025. It was the first time the firm worked with Blizzard and its parent company, Activision Blizzard, for an event of this scale (Bradley noted Tixr has worked “around” the publisher’s video games at DreamHack, ESL and Esports Stadium in Arlington, Texas, where Activision Blizzard’s games make regular appearances).
“Because we’re a system that does conduct business globally in one system and also the visual nature of our product, which we can get into, it was really what got them interested in working with us. And then, of course, we showed what we can do, and that really blossomed a relationship that then turned into us working together now on BlizzCon as well,” Bradley said.
Building a foundation
BlizzCon is one of those events known for selling out within minutes of tickets going on sale. It’s a packed house every day of the convention, with cosplay contests, esports events, panels, big-name acts for concerts (such as Foo Fighters, Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, Linkin Park, Train) and more.
It’s an event Bradley has wanted to work on ever since attending it himself.
“I went to BlizzCon for the first time about a decade ago, and I was in the same industry, but in the gaming and pop culture, live events industry at the time. But when I saw BlizzCon, it blew me away,” Bradley said. “It was really obvious. It was the highest levels of a live event experience for this incredible visual world of gaming. So ever since then, I’ve been looking for an opportunity, and taking my role as chief revenue officer of Tixr, and then through good fortune and my network, being introduced to the right people to then be able to work with them has really been an incredible blessing in my career.”
Bradley said one thing that caught Blizzard’s attention was how Tixr approached handling packages for different communities, languages and interest levels for the Warcraft 30th anniversary tour. “What we did was offer super fans and influencers and media a place to secure tickets, to be invited to a one-night event in that town, depending on which city it was in from London to Boston and all around the globe,” he said. “We [also] had a beautiful on-brand interface where people could secure tickets, and we used some of our technology like wait-listing and things like that. But that tour was really about, it was almost like a marketing and promotional event tour as much as anything, to really celebrate 30 years with this amazing game.”
One component Tixr introduced with standard fare, such as a new early-bird offering, was integrating ticket sales with lodging in one interface, along with premium experiences and other packages.
“The amount of tickets for this early bird was selected by the client, and it was an amount that they thought was aspirational, but it also gave a lot of people a chance for that first wave,” Bradley said.
And in long-standing BlizzCon tradition, these tickets sold out in mere minutes. Bradley recounted how the first ticket release transpired in Tixr’s “war room” to manage the process.
“There’s so much fun, obviously, excitement, anxiety and all that stuff because when you do put it on sale, literally at that exact moment, at the top of the hour usually, and in this case, you flip the switch and boom, you’re off to the races,” Bradley said. “The good news is that our platform, which has really become known for handling what we like to call at-scale, big on-sales, that can handle a heavy load. And so, our system handled it really well. And it was really humming. And so to your point in a few minutes, we saw a significant majority of the traffic that was ready to buy, be able to buy in such a short window of time that I really did witness in the war room, that the clients were in awe of the speed in which our system was able to allow fans to simply and easily transact.
“It was awesome.”
Same ... but different
DreamHack and BlizzCon are events of a similar scale — selling thousands of tickets, with a host of early birds lining up to buy passes as soon as the selling starts. I wondered how running the ticketing process for DreamHack, an expo celebrating dozens of games that visits different cities in a year, compares with something that’s static in BlizzCon, which focuses on one publisher’s games.
“They’re both some of the largest events in this world globally, right? DreamHack is a touring version, so they do multiple events, they’re very much international, headquartered in Sweden, and we handle events for them globally. So regionally based [events] will be speaking to that more regional audience with the language localization and things of that nature,” Bradley said. “Obviously with Blizzard, it’s a tentpole event, the amount of time between on sale ... and the event itself is almost a year. So it’s a real long lead, which allows them to take advantage of technology. Things like built-in payment plans in our system where fans who might card up four VIP tickets plus experiences and that could add up to be a fair amount of money. Our system allows them to pay it over time very easily and very cost-effectively. So, they get to take advantage of some of these built-in tools that maybe an eventgoer might not.”
Another similarity? The games. “When I was at the Dallas DreamHack show most recently, Blizzard had a really strong presence there, and they’re working with all sorts of events. Whereas BlizzCon is obviously their own brands. So the same, but very different at the same time.”
Celebrations vs. competitions
Tixr’s gaming business is geared toward two types of events: esports competitions and conventions. Some combine both (as DreamHack and BlizzCon do). Bradley says the company is “split down the middle as far as just the number of events that we do that are esports versus more of a convention with esports we’ll do right now.”
A recent esports example is working with OpTic Gaming for an upcoming Call of Duty league event at SMU’s Moody Coliseum, “which would be more in a reserved seating venue, where they’re cheering and watching all day, versus one that has more of a blended mix of entertainment where two or three hours of your day could be in that kind of an esports experience. And then the rest, you’re checking out cosplay, you’re visiting experiences, and it’s just like a convention-style or a pop-culture convention mixed with an esports event.” When it comes to BlizzCon, “it’s really both,” as Blizzard will have esports for Overwatch and Hearthstone going on.
Bradley cited Tixr’s sports work with MLS and other clients with big arenas and stadiums as an asset when it comes to developing a plan of attack for esports events.
Bradley also shared what he and Tixr have learned about working with gaming events that can apply to the business’s full mission.
“The thing that’s important is if it starts at the beginning, when you go on sale, because our ethos and philosophy is that an event really begins at that point long before you’re getting on an airplane or jumping in a car with your friends and driving and checking into your hotel ... the event experience really starts with Day 1, which is on sale,” Bradley said.
Gaming speed reads
- One of my favorite gaming events of the year kicks off Sunday — the Awesome Games Done Quick charity speedrunning event. It runs through Jan. 10 at the Wyndham Grand in Pittsburgh, raising money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. This year’s slate doesn’t include any pure sports games, though esports staple Super Smash Bros. is making an appearance. You can watch here on Twitch and donate here.
- It’s just Jan. 2 and we’re already seeing a price hike thanks to AI, as Kotaku spotted earlier Friday. I just hope this trend doesn’t continue, as I feared it would in my final newsletter of 2025.
- GamesBeat’s Dean Takahashi brings you a tradition of his own — his big preview of the tech that will matter most for gaming at CES this year.
- Looks like FaZe Clan could be in trouble again, as The Esports Advocate’s James Fudge details the exodus of big names who left the organization earlier this week.
- Esports Insider reports that Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok, the biggest name in esports not just in his home of South Korea but worldwide, received the “Cheongyeong Medal,” the nation’s “highest sporting decoration.”