HURON – Attendance at the South Dakota State Fair topped last year’s mark by only about 500 people, but revenue in all categories was markedly higher, especially for grandstand ticket sales, manager Peggy Besch said Tuesday.
It’s always a challenge to accurately tabulate attendance, she said at a meeting of the fair commission.
“We use the same formula every year, so it’s consistent and it’s our best guess,” Besch said.
Total attendance was 211,843 for the five-day event. Camping revenue was up 6.6 percent, with a total of 1,955 campers, and beer sales revenue increased almost 12 percent, to $375,000.
Carnival revenue was up 4.7 percent, grandstand ticket sales increased 20 percent and sponsorships were up 9 percent. Sales tax revenue, with figures still coming in, is estimated to be up 5 percent.
Besch said the 4-H static exhibits were up 6 percent for a total of 8,891. The 4-H livestock exhibits increased about 3 percent for a total of 3,297, and FFA entries were up almost 4 percent for a total of 982. Open class livestock entries also increased.
Overall revenue was up a little more than $200,000 over a year ago.
“We also know our expenses are going to be up,” Besch said. For example, because the bathrooms under the grandstand were closed due to ongoing renovation, the fair had to spend a lot of money on porta-potties, she said.
Commissioners agreed the attendance numbers were substantially higher on Labor Day, but somewhat down on Sunday because of the hot weather. Many people came in at night after the gates shut down.
“There’s a lot of people that come in the gates after eight o’clock,” Besch said.
But she said she’s not sure it would be financially feasible to hire people to sit at all of the gates at night to count people coming in.
Commissioners spent time talking about their State Fair observations from themselves as well as fair staff and part-time workers.
Complaints about the bathhouses were substantially down from past years after the fair hired an additional company to clean them, Besch said.
“Although it costs us a chunk of change, I think it was worth it,” she said.
Bathrooms on the State Fair campus have been a priority and many have been renovated. “We had a ton of compliments on the bathrooms,” Besch said.
She said there were very few complaints about the fact there were no bathrooms at the grandstand.
The issue of golf carts on the fairgrounds continues to be an issue, with some visitors complaining there are too many and others defending them.
Despite rumors that there were at least 600, there were close to 500. South Dakota is the only state that the fair staff knows of that allows golf carts on the grounds, she said.
“We’ll try to reduce them some and find out where that happy medium is,” Besch said.
The permit price to rent a golf cart was raised last year in hopes it would discourage people from using them. Still, they sell out within a few days after they are posted online.
There have also been complaints about the number of young kids operating golf carts. The board is considering whether to impose a rule that if someone under 16 is caught driving a cart it will be forfeited.
Meanwhile, Besch also said there have been 117 off-season events on the fairgrounds this year.
It’s a 20 percent increase over 2016 and represents 242 event days, or an 83 percent increase over last year.
She was asked if the workload to handle that many events is getting to be too much.
They did have to turn down one national event for 2019, she said.
“We’re at a point where we need more staff or we start turning things away,” Besch said.
