Zoom has announced a significant expansion of its webinar platform, which can now support up to one million simultaneous participants.
The decision to increase the number of participants was made after political groups began to actively use Zoom to raise funds for the election campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris. Some of these events attracted hundreds of thousands of participants.
Zoom offered its customers different pricing plans for large-scale events. Users can choose webinars with a maximum number of participants of 10, 50, 100, 250, 500,000, or 1 million. These packages are designed for one-time use and include support from Zoom’s Event Services team.
Smita Hashim, Chief Product Officer at Zoom, commented:
«Event organizers now have the flexibility and power to deliver truly interactive events on an unprecedented scale, as well as the ability to purchase large, one-off webinars».
Zoom sees a future where such large-scale virtual events will become commonplace in the corporate, entertainment, and public sectors. For example, celebrities will be able to use these capabilities to hold virtual fan meetings and other events.
Such large-scale events require significant financial investments. Organizing a one-time webinar for a million participants will cost $100,000. For comparison, a webinar for 10,000 people will cost $9,000, which is almost a dollar per participant.
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