Zoom has announced the ability to host webinars with up to one million people at a time. The idea comes after various political groups began using the video conferencing platform to raise funds for Vice President Kamala Harris’ re-election campaign, systematically calling hundreds of thousands of people.
Image source: Zoom
According to Engadget, Zoom offers various pricing plans for such large events. Clients can choose webinars with a maximum size of 10,000, 50,000, 100,000, 250,000, 500,000 and, of course, 1,000,000 participants. These are one-time packages that are provided with support from the Zoom Event Services team to ensure a smooth and professional experience for all participants.
Despite certain goals set to date related to the US elections, Zoom sees a future in which such large-scale virtual webinars become commonplace in the corporate, entertainment and government segments. The company envisions that celebrities and artists could also use Zoom to host fan meet-and-greets and various other virtual events.
However, all this is not cheap. Booking a one-time webinar for a million people will cost the customer $100,000. A webinar for 10,000 people will cost $9,000, that is, almost one dollar per person. Before this, Zoom officially only supported up to 100,000 participants. However, according to Bloomberg, the company recently changed its terms to accommodate the aforementioned fundraising efforts.
Interestingly, the impetus for such grand webinars was a number of successful events on the platform organized in support of Kamala Harris. Most notably, Win with Black Women raised $1.5 million at an event attended by over 40,000 people. Somewhat later, White Dudes for Harris and White Women for Harris held webinars with 190,000 and 164,000 participants, respectively.
Zoom’s new strategy could also become a new source of income for the company. Moreover, Zoom shares have recently dropped from $560 to $60 per share, and this is associated with a general decrease in demand for virtual meetings after the pandemic.