Millennials and Gen Z aren’t buying houses by default anymore. But they sure are buying other things…

Not too long ago, I was riding an escalator up through the Cape Town Convention Centre when a Stormtrooper glided past me on his way down.

The little girl in me, who got her first sweet taste of the Star Wars universe around the age of 5, nearly squealed out loud with surprise and joy. The more mature version of me stepped in quickly with a reminder that this wasn’t really a resident of a galaxy far, far away, but rather a man dressed like a Stormtrooper. Because of course, this bizarre moment took place at this year’s edition of Comic Con Cape Town.

It was my first time attending this event since its inauguration in 2023, and dear reader, I was not prepared. I had heard about it, of course – the kind of thing you register as existing without ever really thinking too hard about what it means. But walking into the CTICC, I found myself genuinely stopped in my tracks. 

The scale of it. The colour. The sheer, committed effort of it all: thousands of people who had spent weeks, and in some cases months, building elaborate costumes of fictional characters I mostly couldn’t name, wearing them with the kind of pride that felt closer to craftsmanship than cosplay.

And then there was Artists’ Alley: row upon row of independent creators selling original prints, hand-stitched plushies, screen-printed hoodies, custom illustrations. Small businesses, many of them, that owe their existence almost entirely to this weird, colourful, passionate community.

Alongside them were a number of major brands, giving us a taste of just how much money is at play here. Capitec signed on as headline sponsor, offering cardholders a bundled “Super Fan Pass.” Cape Town itself has backed the event through active city sponsorship for three consecutive years.

Stunned and visually overstimulated as I was, I still couldn’t switch off the part of my brain that wondered about the economics of geekdom. Someone, I thought, has figured out that there is real money in this.

The numbers don’t lie

The 2023 inaugural Cape Town edition of Comic Con drew 27,484 attendees who collectively spent over R24 million in the city over a single weekend. In 2026, organisers projected 36,000 attendees – a 31% increase in just three years. The comic references may be niche, but the numbers sure aren’t.

Zoom out and the picture gets even more interesting. According to PwC’s Africa Entertainment and Media Outlook, South Africans spent R5.5 billion on gaming in 2024 – the highest of any country on the continent, and a figure that’s projected to keep climbing. This is gaming, by the way, not gambling – an important distinction in a country where the two are often conflated.

Zoom out further, and the numbers become almost surreal. Global gaming revenue reached $187.7 billion in 2024, making it larger than either the global film or music industry. 

But who is spending all of this money on gaming – kids? Teenagers? Neither one of those age categories is particularly cash flush.

It makes more sense if you consider that the average age of a gamer in the United States is 36. Now we’re getting into an age group with a bit of spending power. This is clearly not a teenagers-in-their-bedrooms story anymore.

Meet the spending generation

The paradox at the heart of the geek economy is that the generations driving geek culture spending are the same ones who are, by most measures, financially squeezed.

Millennials and Gen Z are navigating an economy that has made the traditional markers of adulthood like home ownership, marriage and children genuinely difficult to reach (I wrote about this in more detail in this piece). And yet, a 2024 Bank of America study found that 94% of (well-earning) individuals under the age of 44 are interested in collectibles, compared to about half that among older generations. Millennials and Gen Zers are at least twice as likely as their predecessors to collect sneakers, trading cards, anime figurines and vintage comics.

Global data shows that 85% of Gen Z adults play PC or console games, with the majority playing at least once a week. In the US, 93% of gamers say games provide them with stress relief. Clearly, there’s more to this than idle recreation. It is a deliberate, recurring investment in something that makes life feel more bearable, even when it is barely affordable.

The psychology of play 

There is a concept that the toy industry has only recently caught up to, even though parents have known it instinctively for decades: play is not a phase; it’s a lifelong human need.

The market that has emerged around this insight has been given the slightly unglamorous name “kidulting” – adults spending on toys, games and fandom merchandise. In the last quarter of 2024, adults over 18 spent $1.5 billion on toys globally, officially overtaking children aged 3 to 5 as a consumer group. Adults now account for 28% of all global toy sales, up from 25.5% just two years ago.

Sure, you may buy a He-Man figurine because it reminds you of the cartoons you watched on Saturday mornings as a kid. But psychologists point to something more layered than nostalgia here. These are generations who came of age during the 2008 financial crisis, who graduated into economic uncertainty, who have watched the traditional script – study, work, save, buy, retire – become increasingly difficult to follow.

Delayed milestones are not always a choice. Could the reclamation of play be a type of consolation? You may not be able to buy yourself a house, but you can build a pretty neat one out of LEGO.

There is also something to be said for identity. In a fragmented world, fandom creates belonging. A Marvel hoodie, a Funko Pop on a desk or a limited-edition Pokémon card in a protective sleeve are more than just purchases. They are membership cards. In communities where trust flows horizontally, between fans rather than from brands downward, buying the thing is also a way of saying “I am one of you”.

How businesses are cashing in

LEGO now produces more than 140 sets specifically designed for adults. Their Icons range covers everything from Tolkien’s Middle-Earth to vintage automobiles to the Eiffel Tower. Hasbro has built an entire division, Hasbro Pulse, dedicated to premium adult collectibles. Mattel Creations operates similarly. Disney has been doing this for decades; the company’s entire business model is arguably built on the idea that no one ever really stops loving their characters.

At a local level, the Comic Con economy has created a meaningful market for South African small businesses. Makers, illustrators and designers who might otherwise struggle to reach their audience now have a dedicated venue, a built-in community, and a consumer base primed to spend. For many exhibitors, a single Comic Con weekend represents the biggest sales event of their year, with custom order pipelines that continue for months afterward.

But wait – is this what a recession looks like?

There is a theory in economics called the lipstick effect: the observation that during downturns, consumers redirect their spending toward small, affordable luxuries that provide psychological comfort without breaking the bank. The original data point is lipstick sales, which historically rise during recessions. The modern equivalent might be a limited edition comic book or a booster pack of trading cards.

Flick through the history books, and you may be amused by the pattern that emerges. Mickey Mouse was born in 1929, just as the Great Depression hit. The Marvel cinema sweep found its mass audience in the aftermath of the 2008 financial meltdown. Japan’s animation and collectibles industries – Pokémon, Hello Kitty, the entire ecosystem of kawaii consumer culture – thrived during the country’s so-called Lost Decade of near-zero growth in the 1990s.

South Africa, with its particular cocktail of high unemployment, constrained disposable income, and an extraordinarily young population, is arguably a perfect case study in this dynamic. The geek economy isn’t just growing here despite the economic climate. It may be growing because of it.

We never stop wanting to play

At the end of my day at Comic Con, I watched a man – mid-forties, by the look of him – having his photograph taken next to a car emblazoned with Dragon Ball Z characters. He was beaming. Utterly, unselfconsciously delighted.

And I thought: that’s it, really. That’s the whole thing.

The data is interesting. The business angles are real. The psychology is worth understanding. But underneath all of it is something simpler and more durable than any market report can quite capture – the fact that humans are creatures who need to play. We need to imagine. We need, sometimes, to dress up as someone else and walk around in a convention centre on a Thursday afternoon, surrounded by people who understand exactly why that matters.

The geek economy is booming not because a generation has lost the plot, but because a generation has found something the plot forgot to include. Joy, it turns out, is not a luxury. For many, it is the whole point.