Niantic Wants to Help Communities Rebuild
As part of their upcoming Pokemon GO Fest 2020, Niantic wants to help small businesses impacted by COVID-19 and encourage black content creators. Proceeds from GO Fest 2020 ticket sales and sales of this years shirt will go towards both causes and the CEO of Niantic, John Hanke wants everyone to feel included when it comes to Pokemon GO and the company supports the ongoing BLM protests. Pokemon GO players can nominate one local business for the local business recovery initiative and explain to Niantic why the business are so important to their community. Pokemon GO Fest tickets are on sale now for $14.99 and they will not sell out due to the digital nature of the event this year.
Niantic has always united a rainbow of players of all genders, ethnicities, creeds, etc. and they wants to continue to celebrate this, with proceeds of ticket sales going towards black content creators during the black lives matter movement and donating to US non-profit organizations that will help communities rebuild. In addition to this, Niantic understands that small businesses are struggling through COVID-19 and they’ve started an initiative to allow Pokemon GO players to nominate their local businesses to receive support.
This support will come in the form of turning their location into a Pokestop or GYM and includes limited-time events that Niantic will run at the winning locations to encourage Pokemon GO fans to check out their local small businesses. The top 1,000 businesses nominated by Pokemon GO players will receive this support from Niantic, but certain requirements must be met. Firstly, the small business has to either have limited employees or a maximum of five customer facing locations so successful franchises won’t be included with this initiative. Second, only certain countries can participate in the initiative, such as the US, Canada, Japan, Mexico and Great Britain.
Players can only submit one business and they need to pitch the business to Niantic, explaining why the location is so important to their community and why they deserve to be one of the 1,000 small businesses helped by Niantic with the local business recovery initiative.
Will you be attending Pokemon GO Fest 2020? Let us know in the comments!
Source: Press Release