More and more events in the erotic industry are being canceled due to the corona crisis. The latest international cancellations and postponements are events as diverse as the Exxotica in April, the Transgender Erotica Awards in March, the DomCom Los Angeles, and the Cinekink Festival in New York.
The world on lockdown. For the most sensual of all industries, social distancing is an immense problem. After all, the adult industry lives from interpersonal proximity or at least the illusion of it. The more authentic, the closer, the better. Trade fairs, festivals and award events ensure publicity and better visibility for the whole industry. Now many of them have to be canceled or postponed.
International events are canceled and postponed
The big adult trade fairs for now only cautiously cancel those events that would take place in March or April. In Chicago, the Exxotica planned for April 17 to 19 is canceled. The organizer Three Expo Events, however, remains on track with regard to the fairs in Washington D.C. in June, in Miami in September and in New Jersey in October.
The trade operator writes: »We are committed to do our part to help protect the public and our industry, and made the difficult decision to postpone this event which has been rescheduled for July 31-August 2, 2020 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, IL.«
The organizer of the Transgender Erotica Awards, Steven Grooby, commented on the postponement of the TEAs: »With regret, we have to postpone this weekend’s planned TEAs events at the Bardot and Avalon. We’ve been monitoring the COVID-19 situation for the last few weeks and had planned to proceed as usual, but late last night we saw a statement from Governor Newsom highly recommending canceling events of more than 250 people. This morning we met with our staff and legal team and we made the difficult decision to postpone the TEAs until further notice for the safety and well-being of our community. It is the responsible thing to do for the wider community. In the last hour, we’ve been in communication with Avalon and they just confirmed that they will be postponing all March events until further notice.«
Grooby adds with concern: »We really empathize with the amount of time, money and resources that people have put into attending this weekend. We anticipate a large financial loss on our end due to the situation, but our priority is honoring our guests’ purchases, time and effort as best we can given the circumstances.«
The CineKink Festival also originally wanted to stick to the actual date in New York. Now the team in charge had to change its mind, as the Big Apple is also about to go into a complete lockdown and is quickly becoming the hotspot for the Corona outbreak in the United States.
In a statement on Twitter, they wrote: »A reversal of our recent ‘the show must go on’ bravado, we have reached the difficult decision that the best course for all of us, in light of the escalating situation around COVID-19, is to postpone CineKink NYC until a later date.«