Gamescom Merch Strategy: Giveaways and Quantities

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At Gamescom, some booths attract attention the moment visitors walk by. Often, the reason is simple. People see other attendees carrying a branded item, wearing it, or talking about how they got it. That visibility creates curiosity fast. Good merch turns interest into action, helps a booth build momentum throughout the day, and gives exhibitors a practical way to guide traffic and participation.

3 Questions for Merch Planning

The most effective merchandise plans answer three questions early: who is this for, what do we want them to do, and what kind of item makes that action feel worth it?

At Gamescom, visitors sit at different stages of interest. Some walk past with no prior awareness. Some know the title and need one reason to engage. Others already want the full experience and will invest time to get it. Merchandise works best when each group gets a different kind of reward.

C-Level: Reach

C-level items work at the widest part of the funnel. These are the quick-grab pieces that help a booth stop people in motion and pull in broad traffic. Items like can badges, photocards, antenna hairpins, and carabiners work well because teams can distribute them at scale and keep the unit cost manageable.

At this stage, character appeal often works harder than logo exposure. A playful visual element moves through the halls faster than a branded wordmark alone. A cute hairpin, a collectible card, or a visually strong badge can travel across the venue as a walking signal for the game.

The goal here is reach. These items help more people notice the booth, approach the activation, and start asking questions.

B-Level: Engagement

B-level items reward light interaction. This is where visitors complete a small action such as following a channel, joining a social mission, scanning a QR code, or finishing pre-registration steps. The reward should feel more valuable than a mass giveaway while still supporting volume.

Good examples include tarpaulin bags, string bags, lanyards, and acrylic keyrings. These items carry a strong visibility benefit because visitors continue using them throughout the day. A large bag, in particular, can function like a moving billboard on the show floor.

The goal here is engagement. Visitors receive a tangible reward, and the brand gains an action that supports social growth, lead collection, or campaign participation.

A-Level: Reward

A-level items belong to the deepest part of the visitor journey. These rewards support actions that require real time and effort, such as finishing a game demo, joining an event, or waiting in line for a featured experience. At this stage, practicality and perceived value matter more. Folding chairs, desk mats, T-shirts, and power banks fit well because they feel substantial and memorable.

The strongest A-level rewards also reinforce ownership of the IP world. Visitors should feel that they earned access to something worth keeping. That feeling makes the wait feel productive and gives the brand a stronger emotional finish.

The goal here is reward. These items help convert interest into participation and participation into memory.

Case Study: Mecha BREAK

A successful merch strategy becomes much stronger when it connects with the game world itself. For Mecha BREAK at Gamescom, the objective went beyond handing out items. The focus was to extend the IP into an offline experience that people could see, hear, and record. You can see how EIDETIC approached the full booth experience in our Mecha BREAK Gamescom B2C case study. Instead of treating giveaways as separate from the booth activation, the planning tied merchandise to the event mechanic.

To reflect the weight and impact of the mech genre, the activation featured a gun-shaped object inspired by the world of the game. At set times, the booth used it to launch T-shirts into the crowd. The sound effect, the visual of the launch, and the timing of the event pulled attention from nearby aisles. Visitors began gathering before each round, and more phones came out the moment the shirts fired into the air.

That shift changed the role of the merchandise. The T-shirt remained a reward, yet the distribution method became content in its own right. Visitors captured the moment, shared it, and talked about the booth as the place where shirts were shot into the crowd. The giveaway became a spectacle, and the spectacle drove traffic.

That is a useful lesson for any Gamescom merch strategy. When IP, worldbuilding, and event design work together, merch can become the trigger for booth energy rather than the final step after engagement.

Gamescom Merch Quantity Planning

One of the most common planning questions is also the most practical: how many items should a team actually prepare? Too few and you run out by day two. Too many and you pay to ship them home.

The right answer depends on booth scale, expected traffic, engagement design, and demo capacity. A quantity plan works best when teams separate broad-distribution items from action-based rewards. C-level items should align with expected booth visitors. B-level and A-level items should align with conversion targets and operating capacity. Once your giveaway tiers and quantity targets are clear, the next question is budget. Our Gamescom Booth Cost FAQ covers the major cost factors exhibitors should plan for.

Gamescom 2025 provides a useful benchmark. Organizers reported 357,000 total visitors, and the event ran from August 20 to August 24, with Wednesday including trade visitors and a limited number of private visitors in the entertainment area. That gives exhibitors a clear reference point for multi-day traffic planning.

Visitor Targets by Booth Size

For practical planning, many teams estimate booth traffic by size, location, title awareness, and audience fit. A large booth with strong awareness, a main-traffic location, and a headline title can often plan around an 8 to 12 percent visit rate, which may translate into roughly 30,000 to 40,000 booth visitors across the event. A mid-size booth with a defined fan base and a strategic position can often plan around a 5 to 8 percent visit rate, or roughly 20,000 to 30,000 visitors. A smaller booth, especially in indie-focused areas, can often plan around a 2 to 5 percent visit rate, or roughly 15,000 to 20,000 visitors, depending on hall dynamics and programming.

These working ranges help teams size their C-level inventory. If an item goes to every visitor, the forecast should start with booth traffic first.

B-Level Quantity Targets

B-level items should follow engagement targets rather than total traffic. A useful planning benchmark for many Gamescom programs is to estimate social or light-action engagement at around 40 to 50 percent of booth visitors. For a mid-size booth targeting 20,000 visitors, that could point to 8,000 to 10,000 B-level items across the event, depending on mission design and daily pacing.

This is where teams can set meaningful KPIs. If the goal is social growth, scan participation, or lightweight conversion, B-level merch should map directly to that target rather than sit in a flat reserve pile.

A-Level Quantity Targets

A-level items need a tighter operational calculation. Here, booth traffic matters less than throughput. Teams should calculate by demo time, operating hours, number of stations or seats, and expected completion rate. In many cases, playtest participation lands around 20 to 30 percent of booth visitors, though that number shifts with title format and staffing.

For a mid-size booth receiving 20,000 visitors, a 20 percent participation benchmark would suggest around 4,000 A-level rewards. That figure should still be adjusted against real booth capacity. A high-value item tied to demo completion needs a quantity plan rooted in actual throughput, not broad audience assumptions.

In short: C-level merch follows traffic. B-level merch follows engagement. A-level merch follows capacity.

Merch Sales Rules

For exhibitors considering on-site sales, Gamescom allows merchandise sales under specific conditions. For a full breakdown of booth sales eligibility, Hall 5, and booth zoning, see our Gamescom Merchandise Rules FAQ. In principle, merchandise sales concentrate in Hall 5, the Merchandise Area. Sales inside an exhibitor booth in the B2C Entertainment Area become possible when all three conditions are met:

1. • The booth is 600 square meters or larger
2. • The merchandise is based on the exhibitor’s own IP
3. • The sales zone occupies no more than 30 percent of the total booth area and stays visually integrated with the overall booth design

That matters strategically because merchandise can support two goals at once. It can expand the fan experience, and it can create a revenue opportunity inside the same branded environment. When teams plan that zone with care, the sales area becomes part of the IP story and part of the booth journey.

There’s More to Merch Strategy

When exhibitors build a merch strategy for Gamescom, the real questions go far beyond item selection. Which payment system makes the purchase flow easiest for international visitors? Is local production the better choice, or does overseas production offer more control? How should merch distribution change by booth traffic, event timing, or final-day inventory? These decisions shape how smoothly the booth runs and how well the merch strategy performs on site. With years of hands-on Gamescom experience, EIDETIC helps global game brands plan merch programs that work in the real world, from concept and sourcing to distribution and on-site execution.

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