Niantic earned $249 million in tourism revenue for its Pokemon Go live events in 2019.
The events were held in Chicago, Montreal and Dortmund. Individually, they brought in $120 million, $71 million and $56 million in revenue respectively in and around the cities.
In Chicago, more than 64,000 trainers took part in the four-day event, triple the number from 2018. On top of this, those who took part collectively caught over 15 million Pokemon.
Dortmund's event boasted the most trainers with 86,000 in attendance, more than twice the number in Montreal - 39,000. However, players from over 60 countries made the journey to Canada for the three-day event.
Catch them all in 2020
To build upon the success of its real-world events, Niantic will host another series of events this year.
Pokemon Go's first 2020 live event is the Taiwan Lantern Festival in Taichung, it will be held between February 6th and 9th. Niantic is also planning events in St Louis, Liverpool, and Philadelphia.
"Over the last 7 years, live, real-world events have been central to Niantic's goal in leveraging technology to create interactive experiences that foster exploration and discovery, active and healthy lifestyles and lasting friendships," said Niantic live events senior manager Michael Steranka.
"Niantic's large-scale real-world events have had a true and clear positive economic impact on tourism, bringing people from around the world together for a weekend of adventure. We were incredibly impressed by the number and quality of entries in the #NianticLive2020 program and, as a result, are excited to announce the addition of Liverpool, Philadelphia, and St. Louis to our live events schedule in 2020."
Besides Pokemon Go, Niantic will also hold live events for Harry Potter: Wizards Unite and Ingress.
Ever evolving
Last year, Pokemon Go had its best year-to-date having earned $894 million in revenue. In October 2019, Niantic's augmented reality title broke $3 billion in lifetime earnings. Before that, the game broke another milestone - one billion downloads by August 2019.
