Good morning. It’s Friday, July 10. You can expect temperatures to reach the 80s before noon across most of the county — but get ready for things to get hotter next week.
The municipal money moves behind L.A.’s Anime Expo
Visitors arrive at the Anime Expo at the Los Angeles Convention Center on Thursday, June 2, 2026. (Photo by David Crane/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images)
If you were in DTLA last weekend, you saw them roaming the streets: People in capes, heavy makeup, sometimes furry animal ears. Men with spiky bleach-blond haircuts, women with two pink side-ponytails. Plush characters worn on belts and as backpacks.
They were there for Anime Expo, the largest anime convention in the country, hosted at the L.A. Convention Center, the timeworn city-owned events hall nestled between the 10 and the 110.
Now in its 17th year in L.A., the Expo — which draws about 100,000 adherents — represents the largest annual event at the Convention Center, and has become hugely consequential to the downtown economy. Maybe the most powerful indicator of Anime Expo’s value to Los Angeles: The city, despite a years-long budget crunch, only charges the organizers $1,000 per year to use its 720,000 square feet, which carries a rack-rate price tag of $460,000 for events of the Expo’s size.
Why would a cash-strapped city open its pockets to throw an anime party? To find out, I went downtown on opening night of the convention and paid a visit to Yard House, a chain sports bar with a location in the L.A. Live complex.
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