As the novel coronavirus continues to take a human and economic toll across the world, the lucrative business of tech conferences is not immune.

The direct economic loss from the cancellation from eight major tech conferences including Google I/O, Facebook’s F8 event, and Mobile World Congress over coronavirus has already reached $666 million, according to estimates the data intelligence company PredictHQpulled for Recode. That number doesn’t even include what event organizers like Facebook itself would have made from the event. The figure just covers the losses to airlines, hotels, restaurants, and transportation providers that would normally make money from attendees’ purchases.

Some $480 million — the vast majority of that total loss — comes from the cancellation of Mobile World Congress, which was supposed to host more than 100,000 attendees in Barcelona last month. The Game Developers Conference, a 30,000-person event that was scheduled for March but has been postponed, incurred $129 million in losses. That’s followed by the cancellation of Google I/O, a 5,000-person developer conference whose direct losses are estimated to reach nearly $20 million.

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Vox

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March 5th, 2020