Level Up your experience with these new events coming to the LVL Up Expo
Writer: Amanda Meagher
Home of LVL Up Expo taken by Amanda Meagher
Video games inspire community, conversations, and friendships for people across the globe. Within these communities, many desire to meet with people who share the same interests and the LVL Up Expo offers just that.
The LVL (Level) Up Expo returns to Las Vegas for its 11th year at the Las Vegas Convention Center and it has a lot to unpack. Colten Pipkin, CEO of LVL Up Expo shared their role in the event and what fans can expect in April. The LVL Up Expo draws in thousands of people both locally and across the country to celebrate their passion for all things entertainment-related.
The LVL Up Expo is a convention centered around video games, anime, ESports, and gaming tournaments which is constantly expanding in size and content. The LVL Up Expo was created in 2013 here in the Vegas Valley and has been at the Las Vegas Convention Center for the last 5 years. The LVL Up Expo was created by Colten Pipkin and his friend Lauren Arancibia in 2012 as a way for Colten and his friends to nerd out together.
“We are in the top 10 right now for the biggest shows in the country and hopefully by next year we will be in the top 5,” said Colten Pipkin, CEO. “So, this year we were like 350,000 square feet (about the area of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool), next year it is like 600,000 square feet.”
“Yes, so I’m probably the biggest nerd you’ve ever met, right? I watch anime, I play video games, I read comics, and I cosplayed back in the day. I play DND every other Sunday if we can get everyone to show up” Pipkin said. “We wanted to do something in town that was just fun. It was fun and engaging and something we could have fun with that weekend. Then it turned into a 70-hour job. This is all day every day what I do for a living now.”
Word quickly got out about the event and Colten and Lauren decided this could be something huge that could bring nerds and geeks together. LVL Up Expo is a non-profit organization that accepts volunteers to help run the show every year. The LVL Up Expo has consistently expanded by 30-40% every year and they are expecting an average of 50,000-55,000 attendees a day. Some of the big returning events are panels with famous voice actors and celebrities, gaming tournaments, cosplay competitions, wrestling matches, and car shows. Rayquon Pressely has attended the LVL Up expo for the last three years and has been blown away every time.
Picture of Rayquon Preseely at LVL Up Expo taken by Amanda Meagher
“I went in, I went downstairs, and I went to the pavilion. It was right there, and you could see everything from the front in the back to the big giant screen where they were playing smash bros,” Rayquon said. “Then what started getting me was everyone in cosplay, and then a pink limo pulled up and five people hopped out dressed as at the time my favorite anime, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, and they were all dressed up as people from Part 5.”
Pressely went on further to discuss the sheer size of LVL Up Expo and how much there is to do, stating that it takes multiple days to get through everything. LVL Up expo has a scavenger hunt for attendees, a retro arcade area with hundreds of free-to-play machines, a Smash Bros Competition, and even an artist alley which is filled with vendors and artists from around the world with amazing merchandise you cannot find anywhere else.
“I ended up spending like $300 for that first day,” Pressley said. “The second day I cashed out so much, I got ‘One Piece’ Posters and then I got four posters for $20.”
Picture of the outside of the Las Vegas Convention Center taken by Amanda Meagher
The LVL Up expo is expanding into the west wing this year and has 600,000 sq ft of room to fill this upcoming year in the world’s largest convention center. Last year Colten only had 350,000 sq ft to work with but the LVL Up expo has grown so much that they have had to more than double the space. With all this new space to fill, Colten brings some big-name gaming companies and even more voice actors, such as Chris Sabat, to fill the show.
“We are working on a kickass collaboration with battle bots. If everything goes well in that end there’s going to be an actual battle arena built within LVL Up where people can come out and compete for 10 grand and bring 20-pound robots to destroy each other” Pipkin said. “Everything else that you’ve seen at level up before like the arcade setup, the gaming tournaments, the stages, everything is getting doubled.”
The fan experience has always been a huge aspect of this show and Colten Pipkin has made it his goal to listen to as much feedback from fans as possible. After every show, there is a survey email sent to attendees where they can voice their feedback. Colten and his team review the feedback every year when planning for the upcoming show. The biggest complaints are things out of Colten’s control, like parking, the lines, location, wait times, and the prices of food. Despite this, Colten and his volunteers have worked hard to make LVL Up more exciting and unrecognizable from how they operated and looked in their first year.
“Like when people think of conventions they think of PAX, Anime Expo, and shows like that. But our main hall is double the size of the Anime expo hall. It’s larger than the San Diego Comic-Con space. It is an absolutely massive show and I wish more people knew how big it was in comparison,” Pipkin said. “We will never stop expanding, we will never stop adding cool shit and we will constantly blow people’s minds with what they see every year coming out. We will never stop leveling up.”
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