PR93988

NUREMBERG, Germany, Jan. 10, 2022 /PRNewswire=KYODO JBN/--

- Character of the world's largest consumer fair for the industry to be

preserved

- Dominique Metzler to continue as director

Spielwarenmesse eG takes over the Internationale Spieltage SPIEL event in Essen

on 1 January 2022. The Nuremberg trade fair and marketing services provider

thus becomes the new owner of the biggest public fair for board games in the

world. SPIEL will continue to be held at the Essen exhibition centre and

organised from Bonn by Dominique Metzler, its director of many years' standing,

and her highly experienced team. Florian Hess, Chair of Spielwarenmesse eG,

serves as an additional director.

SPIEL has a history stretching back nearly 40 years. The event has developed

from a small gathering of players in 1983 to what is today the largest consumer

fair in the world for board, card and role-playing games. Traditionally, new

national and international games products are introduced to a broad audience at

the Essen exhibition centre in the autumn. Every year the event has some

200,000 visitors – and the numbers have been growing.

"It was important to me to retain the unique profile of SPIEL for the future,"

says Dominique Metzler, who with Rosemarie Geu successfully established and

built up her family business over recent decades. "I am very pleased to have

found in Spielwarenmesse eG, with its experience in worldbeating fairs, a

partner that can continue and further develop the success of this fair on my

model for the coming decades as well. My team and I are delighted to be working

alongside them."

The pandemic has given an additional boost to the popularity of board games. In

2020, the German games market alone grew by 21%. This is a trend that is also

apparent in the B2B sector at the Spielwarenmesse. The Internationale

Spieleerfindermesse – Game Inventors Convention is being integrated into the

Spielwarenmesse, further strengthening the games business area. The Nuremberg

organisers are promising a similarly cautious approach where the SPIEL games

fair is concerned, but in this case as a separate event that will be maintained

in its original form.

As a cooperative, Spielwarenmesse eG already functions "from the industry, for

the industry". Its member businesses include numerous games publishers. As

Christian Ulrich, Spokesperson for the Executive Board, is keen to stress, "In

the Spielwarenmesse and the SPIEL games fair we have two entirely different

concepts, but those concepts intersect powerfully in terms of subject matter,

creating plenty of synergies. With SPIEL, we are expanding our responsibilities

in the business area for games, without changing the typical character of the

fair." Its survival has been ensured and visitors to Essen can continue to try

games out and play to their hearts' content.

Spielwarenmesse eG

Spielwarenmesse eG is the fair organizer and marketing services provider for

the toy sector and other consumer goods markets. The Nuremberg company

organizes the world-leading Spielwarenmesse(R) in Nuremberg, Kids India in

Mumbai and Insights-X in Nuremberg. The range of services provided by the

cooperative also includes industry campaigns and the international fair

programme, World of Toys by Spielwarenmesse eG, which enables manufacturers to

exhibit at pavilions featured at trade fairs in Asia, Russia and the USA.

Spielwarenmesse eG operates a worldwide network of representatives in over 90

countries. It also has several subsidiaries, including Spielwarenmesse Shanghai

Co., Ltd., responsible for the People's Republic of China and Spielwarenmesse

India Pvt. Ltd., covering the Indian market. The cooperative holds a majority

stake in the Russian exhibition company Grand Expo, which organizes Kids Russia

in Moscow. Die roten Reiter GmbH subsidiary with headquarters in Nuremberg

works as communication agency for the consumer and capital goods industry. The

complete company profile of Spielwarenmesse eG can be seen on the Internet at

www.spielwarenmesse-eg.com.

SPIEL

SPIEL was launched in 1983 as a gathering of readers of a specialist games

journal published in Bonn, with twelve exclusively invited exhibitors. It was

called the 'Deutsche Spielertage' (German games fair) and was held at the Essen

College of Further Education. In 1984 the event was already recording 15,000

visitors and in the following year it moved to the Essen exhibition centre.

SPIEL rapidly developed into the world's largest public fair for board, card

and role-playing games, where games publishers from all over the world present

the latest trends and developments to a broader public for the first time and

visitors have the opportunity to try out and buy the new products on site. The

SPIEL event hosts the award of both the annual 'German Games Prize' and the

'innoSPIEL' award for a particularly innovative games idea.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1722197/Spielwarenmesse.jpg

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1722196/SPIEL_2022_Logo.jpg

SOURCE: Spielwarenmesse eG