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The Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) is dead. Following cancellations in 2020<\/a>, 2021<\/a>, 2022<\/a>, 2023<\/a>, and Thursday\u2019s revelation that it won\u2019t return to Los Angeles in 2024 or 2025 either<\/a>, you can safely stick a fork in the world\u2019s former most influential gaming show. It\u2019s done, replaced by events that stream online like the Summer Game Fest<\/a>, Nintendo Direct<\/a>, PlayStation Showcase<\/a>, Xbox Games Showcase<\/a>, and Ubisoft Forward<\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n But given how seemingly easily it\u2019s been replaced, you might be wondering: how big a deal was it, really?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In 2016, I wrote for CNET how it was actually becoming less<\/em> of a gamer\u2019s mecca every year<\/a>, and you aren\u2019t really missing that much. But when I ran the numbers today, they told a slightly different story \u2014 E3 had roughly doubled in size and more than quadrupled in economic impact before the pandemic laid it low.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I didn\u2019t choose 2009 and 2019 just to make a nice round decade: it\u2019s the first year after E3 returned to the LA Convention Center, and the last year before the show was canceled. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n And its loss will be a blow to Los Angeles. Last year, LA Tourism executive director Doane Liu told dot.LA\u2019<\/em><\/a>s Samson Amore<\/a> that E3 represented an injection of $83.4 million to the city\u2019s economy, much of it in hotel rooms where the city collects tax revenue. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe practically give away the convention center if [organizers] agree to book a certain number of hotel rooms… It\u2019s really an incentive to bring business travel to Los Angeles,\u201d Liu told the publication.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n E3 isn\u2019t the only event that\u2019s big business for LA, though. To put these numbers in perspective, the LA Tourism Board reported that E3 generated $75 million for the city in 2017, and that the Los Angeles Convention Center had a total economic impact of $780 million that year \u2014 so the big game show was only a tenth of what the city\u2019s big expo building brought in, to say nothing of LA\u2019s other attractions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n