I live in Sweden and we have 2 really big (for Sweden) and a dozen or so minor Game conventions each year, where the bigger draws about 1500-3000 people and has been in action for the last 35-ish years.
This year, in late may, there was a guy who set up a battletech game,nothing planned. He was supposed to have a western diorama, but the company had to call in sick, so he took his old BT stuff there instead and started up games a few times per day and it was a blast. He made a lot of free advertising for the miniatures of Ral Partha Europe and Catalyst Games upcoming boxes as well as HBS battletech (which people could play on his laptop).
He and a friend also held a small scenario for ATOW which drew people to stand in line to play.
It was really fun.
So now I am playing in a ATOW campaign with 6 other players every weekend and we have ourselves a real nice going game and he has been asked back the next year to hold an offcial game as well as there seem to be a lot of ATOW interested players in my town as he has been contacted on facebook, he told us, by people wanting to play in his adventures.
So it is rivalling some of the games which are quite popular here at our game clubs (Pathfinder, D&D5 and Into the Loop). Hopefully it is the same in other places.