Crawford County Fair attendance bests 2009 figures

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August 29, 2010

By Keith Gushard MEADVILLE TRIBUNE The Meadville Tribune Sun Aug 29, 2010, 10:08 PM EDT

WEST MEAD TOWNSHIP — WEST MEAD TOWNSHIP — Paid attendance at the 2010 Crawford County Fair exceeded the 71,000 mark — beating last year’s attendance by more than 1,200.

Preliminary figures for the 2010 fair puts paid attendance at 71,115 — some 1,235 more than the 2009 mark of 69,880. The highest paid attendance for the eight-day fair was 86,997 in 2006.

The paid attendance numbers don’t include those under age 12 or 4-H and FFA members who are admitted free. The numbers also don’t include free senior citizen admissions on Monday and Tuesday afternoons and those who bought passes. The Crawford County Fair Board estimates there is one free or pass admission for each paid one.

“The last couple of days really pulled us out,” Walter (Boots) Dunn, Crawford County Fair Board president, said of the 2010 attendance.

“The demolition derbies always draw a lot of people and the good weather — that’s what brought us up,” he said in a telephone interview Sunday afternoon.

Earlier in the week, attendance had been running behind the 2009 pace for the same day.

Saturday’s demolition derby program at the Crawford County Fair drew 7,438 spectators in total for the two performances at the grandstand.

There were 5,464 persons for the evening show — 4,680 in the grandstand and 784 in across-the-track seating. The afternoon show had 1,974 persons — 1,881 in the grandstand and 93 in across-the-track seating.

While paid attendance was up for the year, the fair board is expected to have lost money about $11,600 overall on its two feature concert events.

Less than half of the 10,000 available seats for the Thursday night’s Darius Rucker/Kellie Pickler show sold. Unofficial concert ticket sales were 4,564, with an estimated loss of about $23,000.

However, more than 5,000 tickets were sold for Wednesday night’s Josh Turner/Phil Vassar show, with preliminary estimates of an $11,400 profit on it.

But, the fair lost money on its American Jam local musicians show on Monday, Dunn said.

A preliminary financial report on the 2010 fair will be presented at the board’s next meeting on Oct. 14. The board doesn’t meet in September after the fair.

The preliminary report will be prepared after most of the outstanding bills are in, Dunn said.

A final financial report on the 2010 fair will be presented at the fair board’s annual meeting in December.

Keith Gushard can be reached at 724-6370 or by e-mail at kgushard@meadvilletribune.com.

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Crawford County Fair attendance bests 2009 figures

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