Here's how much it costs to show a game in Gamescom Opening Night Live
A one-minute trailer in Gamescom's Opening Night Live is worth €125,000 (~$127,600), according to Gamescom itself. That's the price listed for «partners»—aka sponsors—to secure a spot in the opening livestream hosted by Geoff Keighley, which last year ran for two hours and included more than 30 games.
There's nothing unusual about sponsors paying to have their games featured in a big showcase like Opening Night Live. If you've watched a few livestreams of this type, you've probably picked up on certain games that kept popping up in a clear concerted marketing push (I'm looking at you, Blankos Block Party).
What is unique is the price for that sponsorship to be public information: as spotted by Start Menu's Lex Luddy, Gamescom lists the prices for Opening Night Live trailer spots on a publicly accessible B2B page. A 30 second spot starts at €85,000, though you get the most bang for your buck with a 90-second spot for €165,000.
I reached out to Keighley and Gamescom with a few questions about the rates, and what percentage of Opening Night Live is made up of sponsored segments. Gamescom declined to answer specifically, but did say that the majority of games featured in the show are included for free. Other events, including our own PC Gaming Show, work the same way, with the majority of games being editorial inclusions and others being paid sponsors. These events cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to my colleague Evan Lahti, PC Gamer's Global Editor-in-Chief, in order to pay for talent, cameras, studio time, motion graphics, crew, travel, and as we did one year, an animatronic robot to co-host the show.
The price of a segment in Opening Night Live looks steep, but that's not even the full cost of
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