My first thought as I was reading this was that perhaps some conventions have decided they don't want to play the game anymore of seeing how high they can rank among other furry conventions, and they would rather just put on the best convention they can without being concerned about or distracted by such concerns. The game is a dubious one, for regardless of what a convention's leadership may wish, fans are interested and do pay attention to such things.
Tyco mentioned running the numbers to exclude no-shows from the attendance figures, so it's worth pointing out that some conventions do in fact include those who preregistered and paid in advance but didn't actually attend in their attendance figures. It's one of those cases where each convention follows their own procedures and they are likely not consistent across different conventions. Even that assumes it's a good faith attempt to put out an accurate figure, and even that might not always be the case. I'm aware of at least one instance where some observers speculated that the "official" attendance figure was inflated because the actual figure would have looked bad.
It's worth noting too that not all conventions want to be bigger. Before it was cancelled several years ago, FurFright put a cap on their attendance because they knew it would be logistically impossible to continue putting on the kind of convention they wanted to if it continued to grow. Mephit Fur Meet has some room to grow but doesn't want to become too large for fear of losing the family reunion feel that regular attendees appreciate.
My first thought as I was reading this was that perhaps some conventions have decided they don't want to play the game anymore of seeing how high they can rank among other furry conventions, and they would rather just put on the best convention they can without being concerned about or distracted by such concerns. The game is a dubious one, for regardless of what a convention's leadership may wish, fans are interested and do pay attention to such things.
Tyco mentioned running the numbers to exclude no-shows from the attendance figures, so it's worth pointing out that some conventions do in fact include those who preregistered and paid in advance but didn't actually attend in their attendance figures. It's one of those cases where each convention follows their own procedures and they are likely not consistent across different conventions. Even that assumes it's a good faith attempt to put out an accurate figure, and even that might not always be the case. I'm aware of at least one instance where some observers speculated that the "official" attendance figure was inflated because the actual figure would have looked bad.
It's worth noting too that not all conventions want to be bigger. Before it was cancelled several years ago, FurFright put a cap on their attendance because they knew it would be logistically impossible to continue putting on the kind of convention they wanted to if it continued to grow. Mephit Fur Meet has some room to grow but doesn't want to become too large for fear of losing the family reunion feel that regular attendees appreciate.