ComplexCon Staging First Las Vegas Youth Festival

Posted on: October 5, 2024, 03:05h. 

Last updated on: October 5, 2024, 03:05h.

Corey Levitan Read More

Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Las Vegas Myths.

ComplexCon is coming to Las Vegas. The annual celebration of urban music, streetwear, art and sports is expected to draw 60,000 young visitors to the Las Vegas Convention Center’s West Hall on Nov. 16 and 17. That’s the weekend before the F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix.

Headlining the convention will be rapper Travis Scott, who will close out the convention with a Sunday night performance, in addition to serving as its artistic director.

ComplexCon is an offshoot of Complex, a New York-based youth culture brand founded in 2002 by Marc Ecko as a bi-monthly hip-hop fashion magazine. In 2016, the same year the company became a joint venture of Verizon and Hearst, it staged its first convention at the Long Beach Convention Center.

So Long, Beach!

Every year outside the pandemic, ComplexCon has been held in Long Beach. (Additional editions were held in Chicago in 2019 and in Hong Kong this March.) But its Las Vegas debut will quadruple the annual weekender’s size. This year, it will span more than 1 million square feet of convention-center floor with brands, activations, product releases and experiences.

ComplexCon has built a reputation for exclusive sneaker releases from Nike and Adidas, as well as appearances by young celebrities operating at the nexus of music and streetwear, including designer/DJ Nigö, rapper/producer/designer Kid Cudi, and musician/producer/designer Hiroshi Fujiwara.

Scott will also use this year’s convention to debut CactusCon, an area of the convention floor dedicated to his apparel brand, Cactus Jack.

“Travis Scott helped inaugurate the first ComplexCon, and we are excited to welcome him back with an expanded role and as the Sunday night headliner,” Complex CEO Aaron Levant said in a statement. “Travis Scott defines this generation of Complex fans, and we are excited to be working with him in our new home in Las Vegas.”

In 2021, Complex was acquired by Buzzfeed Inc. which, in February, sold it to its current owner, the live-video shopping platform NTWRK, for a reported $108 million. As of 2019, Complex’s annual revenue was estimated at $200 million.

Food will also be on the convention’s menu this year, as Complex recently gobbled up the annual Family Style Food Festival, a likeminded mix of streetwear and urban youth culture starring young chefs and their startup restaurants and merch.

ComplexCon has yet to introduce the lineup for its panel sessions, but previous talks have featured Kobe Bryant, Lil’ Kim and Kendrick Lamar.

Its first Las Vegas convention will kick off with a celebrity golf tournament at Wynn Las Vegas.

Passes for ComplexCon, starting at $150 for the day, can be purchased here.