At the Sydney Supanova convention in June 2021 an exhibitor was found to be trying to sell items with Nazí symbols and far right ideologies on it. Complaints were initially made by other vendors on the Friday night before the convention started about this material, but it was allegedly ignored by Supanova staff.

Many complaints were made by both exhibitors and patrons the following day about the stall, and the stall took down some of its more graphic content but remained open after security. There are multiple witness accounts that on the Saturday that Supanova owner, founder and director Daniel Zachariou had a friendly conversation with the stall holder. There are also multiple reports that staff from this stall harassed attendees. 

Change only came once many people began to report this store and the harassment via commenting on Supanova's social media posts, and with press beginning to run news stories on it. By the Sunday morning once it was clear this problem wasn't going to go away and Supanova finally removed the stall.

Contrary to initial reports this stall was not banned, and has operated under the same name at Supanova since at least 2012, and as recently as 2019. They used the same name in 2021. The stallholder was however banned from ComicGong in 2014 for selling offensive merchandise.

This sadly is just the latest in a long series of issues that Supanova has had. Their early conventions had a policy that you could only Cosplay as your 'own gender'. This was dropped very quickly due to community backlash.

In 2015 Daniel Zachariou insisted on keeping Adam Baldwin on his guestlist, despite heavy community backlash for Baldwin's role in the GamerGate movement. Even though he runs one of the largest pop culture conventions in the country, Zachariou claimed to have never heard of GamerGate.

In 2016 he faced heavy criticism for posting and supporting a petition against LGBTQIA+ youth charity Minus 18 and the Safe Schools program. He did apologise for this, but yet again, only after heavy criticism from the community.

Earlier in 2021 he also shared a petition expressing anti-vaccine views, which are extremely concerning given he is in the business of putting on large scale, family-focused events.

At this point, with perpetual controversies that stem from the owners personal views being very much at odds with the community that supports and keeps his event running, it is pretty clear that Daniel Zachariou is the problem. Whilst I am aware that him standing down as director for a company he owns outright probably wont have a huge impact on his control over Supanova, this would at the least be a show of good faith that he actually cares for the safety and wellbeing of the very community that has given him an incredibly lucrative career.