On the golf course just outside the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, thousands of people stride across the grass, phones in their hands and eyes on their screens.
“Who has a shiny Oshawott they can trade? What about a Blitzle? Any Pansages?” one person asks.
“I’ve got a Snivy!” someone shouts back.
“I’ll trade a Panpour,” another counters.
To an outsider, the scene might sound like an episode of “Storage Wars” — gibberish over a megaphone — and look a bit like a zombie apocalypse. But the people here are, in fact, Pokémon Go fans who arrived at mega-event “Pokémon Go Tour: Unova” this past weekend for a shot at catching some of the gaming world’s favorite fictional creatures. It’s been nearly a decade since the release of mobile game Pokémon Go, the brainchild of San Francisco-based augmented reality developer Niantic and the Pokémon Co. — you may recall the days of 2016 when droves of Angelenos swarmed the city’s streets in search of brightly colored, cartoon-like Pokémon.
Now in 2025, it’s evolved into a herculean entity that hosts IRL gatherings such as the Unova tour stop in L.A., which was broken into “seasons” across the Rose Bowl and surrounding areas. Attendees pose in front of Halloween decorations, then scramble to catch a photo beneath artificial snow nearby. As they move, their screens light up with different colors — crossing into “Winter Caverns” changes their game face to blue. Likewise, a stroll into “Autumn Masquerade” switches it to red.
Here on the golf course, a group gathers under an oak tree to escape the sun. A man dressed in a Pikachu onesie sits along the roots, swigging water and catching a breath. One player pits her lowly Sandshrew against the legendary Reshiram. On any other day, she’d be beat, but with 20 other players fighting with her, she’ll see swift victory.
“I keep messing up my curve balls,” she shouts, manically flicking her fingers across her phone screen to throw Poké Balls, the spherical tools used to catch Pokémon, the mission of the game. After throwing her last Poké Ball, the majestic white dragon flees. “Damn it!” she says.
The weekend’s festivities tallied 48,000 visitors, while roughly 253,000 participated in the wider virtual event throughout Los Angeles and Orange County. Twenty-one million Pokémon were caught. Such staggering numbers certainly warrant the question: How has a mobile game outlasted the fads and maintained such a grip on its fans?
“If you’ve been playing Pokémon Go for 10 years, it’s possible in the last decade that you’ve found your partner, you’ve settled down, you’ve had kids,” Angela Ferguson-Martins, live events marketing manager for Niantic, says. “You could be introducing them to Pokémon right now, and I think that that’s something really special.”
“Pokémon: The First Movie,” a Japanese anime adventure film first released in the U.S. in 1998, forever changed the lives of children, who became well acquainted with the likes of Pikachu, Squirtle, Charmander and Bulbasaur, and their parents, whose wallets were wedged open to dole out for trading cards and merchandise. When Pokémon Go was released years later, it was seen by many as revolutionary — through the use of AR, players were able to see different Pokemon in the living world around them.
For Zoë, a Pokémon Go content creator who goes by ZoëTwoDots and traveled from Australia for the event, Pokémon was the foundation of her youth. Pokémon Go offered a way back in.
“I would have been about 4 or 5 years old when the show came out,” she said. “I was just enamored with it, collecting the cards from a very young age.”
Fifty-year-old Burbank native Rit Lu found his way to Pokémon Go through his daughter when the game launched. While his daughter is “onto other things now,” Lu is still all in. He recalls the Pokémon Go fan base dwindling in the years before the COVID-19 pandemic. But in 2020, when everyone was stuck indoors, Niantic introduced new ways for fans to play at home, amping up the excitement for the game. For instance, it added remote raid passes, an add-on to the already-existing Pokemon raids that allowed players to join from afar.
In 2022, Niantic released the Community Ambassador Program, which Lu slotted into comfortably. Nowadays, he hosts meetups of around 100 players, twice a week. Around special event days, the gatherings can reach anywhere up to 400. On the Niantic Campfire app, as well as on the Pokémon Go Los Angeles subreddit and Facebook group, players can find in-person happenings across the city.
Lu ascribes the game’s longevity to none other than community. Even though the voluntary program demands a “net outpouring” of his funds and a large time commitment, he calls it a “labor of love.”
“We do this because it helps cement my ability to help my community,” Lu says. “The game encourages and incentivizes us to come together, to help each other … it’s set up so that when you win more, I win more.”
As far as what’s on the horizon for the gaming behemoth, Niantic recently confirmed the release of video game “Pokémon Legends: Z-A” in late 2025, which will likely be brought over to Go soon after. In the meantime, the company has also officially partnered with Major League Baseball, further cementing the game’s U.S. presence. This blooming relationship will transform certain games throughout each team’s season to incorporate aspects of Pokémon Go.
Encino residents Dan and Imy Velderrain, both in their 50s, picked up the game one day and couldn’t put it back down. They’re sitting at a nearby patio, sheltered under umbrellas and fighting off sweat.
“Since 2019,” Dan says, proudly sharing how long he has been playing.
Dan was never a fan of the games growing up but was introduced to it by Imy’s son. The two would hang out at their local park to join raids — events that give players a chance to battle and catch legendary Pokémon.
“We go down there, and they’re all doing the raids but they need one more player so I just downloaded it,” Dan remembers. “And here I am ever since.” He explains that he is usually early wherever he goes and so the game helps him “kill time.”
The Velderrains’ children are at the event on this day as well, the game having helped the family stay connected. As the couple rests in the shade, they look out at the masses of players on the acres of grass.
When asked where their kids are, Imy simply points toward the crowds, laughs and says, “They’re out there somewhere!”
