Red River Valley Fair
WEST FARGO (KFGO) – The Red River Valley Fair is reporting a drop in attendance and a massive financial loss after this year’s fair.
General Manager Cody Cashman says this year’s fair was a net loss.
“This year’s fair was not a record year. It was an absolute disaster financially for the fair. We’ve never seen anything like it.”
Cashman says the biggest loss was the Blake Shelton concert.
“Blake Shelton was a $1.1 million concert. We only sold 5,500 tickets to Blake Shelton,” Cashman told the Cass County Budget Commission. “That’s never happened in the history of Blake Shelton. We had to up our cost of tickets in order to pay for a $1.1 million act.”
Cashman say while weather was a factor in driving down concert attendance, that was not the main cause of financial loss. He blames operation costs, like renting a stage for 3 weekends instead of for 10 days.
Cashman says the fair will likely go back to a 10-day fair instead of their experimental schedule from this year.
“We’re going to go back to a 10-day run of fair, because it’s cheaper… We went to a 3 weekend, which should have worked. It did not financially.”
The fair board has not yet approved this change.
Another blow to finances was the loss of $400,000 to credit card chargebacks in 2023. Cashman says the FBI is investigating this as credit card fraud, but it’s unlikely the fair will recover the lost revenue.
Cashman reports strong attendance, with an estimated 137,000 people going through the gates in 2024. That’s still about 10,000 fewer than 2023. The fair expected an attendance close to 200,000.
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