PAX South is the latest of many events to fall victim to COVID-19 complications, but the implications for this regional event go a bit further this time than simply canceling it for this year. Organizers announced this week that due to the stagnant nature of PAX South compared to events like PAX East and PAX West, the Texas-based event will be canceled “for the foreseeable future.” COVID-19 problems were mentioned as a compounding factor in this decision.
In a statement shared on Friday about the decision to cancel 2022’s PAX South and any other iterations of the event in the future, the organizers called the announcement “a difficult decision. The PAX team mentioned that other PAX events have flourished since they were held in other cities but said that PAX South has not benefitted from this same growth.
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“When the first PAX was held in 2004, we expected at most a hundred locals to show up,” the PAX team said. “Never in our wildest dreams did we anticipate more than 3,000 passionate fans to arrive, or for our one-time event to turn into a series held in five cities around the world. While each of our other events has flourished, some of them drawing hundreds of thousands of attendees from around the world, PAX South hasn’t expanded and to some extent has remained the same show that it was when we opened it in 2015.”
With that in mind, the organizers have elected to cancel the event. There was no indication in the announcement that PAX South will return in the future, but the PAX team said it’d be taking the learnings from the Southern event to apply them to other regional PAX meetups. It also said it looks forward to seeing PAX South attendees at other events, though as anyone who attended PAX events will note, part of the appeal of them was the regional locations which made it easier to attend one near you instead of traveling across the country to a convention.
“The heart of PAX South lives on in the incredible memories we made in our Texas community and with the international fans and Enforcers who came out to support the show,” the announcement said. “We’re sorry to all our friends who were looking forward to the show’s return in 2022 – we join them in that – but we hope to see you again at our other events as PAX returns. You will forever be part of our family and the legacy of PAX. We learned a great deal from you, and future shows will be better for it.”