Best festival city (U.S/Canada)

[btownboss4]

How is none of the cities that host state fairs in the discussion.

Like the Texas and Indiana State Fairs are like 23 days long.

I believe Milwaukee hosts both Summerfest and the Wisconsin State Fair, that’s combined a whole month

[SweethomeSanAntonio]

Originally Posted by whereiend

Dude. I'm looking at the aggregate attendance and economic impact. ACL did 450k people and 390 million economic impact in 2021. How is that "not that big"? SXSW hasn't had a full size post-covid event but it did $355M back in 2019. That's 15% bigger that Lolla's post-inflation 2021 numbers.

As far as the Houston rodeo goes (not sure how that's relevant?), It's not quite at the scale of these but it is also a big event in its own right. I call it "SXSW for Republicans".

Another massive festival in Austin I completely forgot about (due to whiteness I admit) is Texas Relays. That's the SXSW for black people.

Fiesta San Antonio is the biggest festival in Texas with 3.5 million in attendance yearly and San Antonio's Stock Show & Rodeo is not much smaller than Houston's rodeo with over 2 million in attendance yearly.

[atadytic19]

Originally Posted by SweethomeSanAntonio

Fiesta San Antonio is the biggest festival in Texas with 3.5 million in attendance yearly and San Antonio's Stock Show & Rodeo is not much smaller than Houston's rodeo with over 2 million in attendance yearly.

That's fuzzy math.
You are comparing paid on grounds attendance for the Houston Rodeo to estimated crowds for all activities related to Fiesta and the SA Rodeo. The events are just on a different scale. Looking at record attendance based on tickets sold for SA rodeo their own website lists it at 16,000.
For Houston the record night was over 80,000.

The record attendance for all activities associated with SA Rodeo is 1.7M. The on grounds attendance record for Houston Rodeo is 2.7M.

The economic impact is another good indicator.
Houston Rodeo 390+ Million
Fiesta 340M
SA Rodeo 250M

Its including all the people at parades and stuff that rack up the numbers for SA while for Houston is just looking at the people who paid to enter the events. To me that is a better measure than random crowd estimates. No one can definitely say how many people are at open street events. But you can definitely count how many tickets were sold.

[wpipkins2]

Pittsburgh is a city of neighborhoods and many of them hold annual festivals. Every weekend during spring and summer there is something going on.

[SweethomeSanAntonio]

Originally Posted by atadytic19

That's fuzzy math.
You are comparing paid on grounds attendance for the Houston Rodeo to estimated crowds for all activities related to Fiesta and the SA Rodeo. The events are just on a different scale. Looking at record attendance based on tickets sold for SA rodeo their own website lists it at 16,000.
For Houston the record night was over 80,000.

The record attendance for all activities associated with SA Rodeo is 1.7M. The on grounds attendance record for Houston Rodeo is 2.7M.

The economic impact is another good indicator.
Houston Rodeo 390+ Million
Fiesta 340M
SA Rodeo 250M

Its including all the people at parades and stuff that rack up the numbers for SA while for Houston is just looking at the people who paid to enter the events. To me that is a better measure than random crowd estimates. No one can definitely say how many people are at open street events. But you can definitely count how many tickets were sold.

Fiesta San Antonio has been around for more than century and sources estimate 3.5 million in total attendance at its 100 plus events. The biggest Fiesta parade is the Fiesta Night Flambeau brings 750,000 spectators to downtown streets and to its other Fiesta events throughout downtown. This parade also has a 1.5 million tv audience.

San Antonio's Rodeo attracts well over 2 million in attendance.

San Antonio has all types of festivals including music festivals that have over 50k in attendance. The music festivals in San Antonio are big but definitely not amongst the largest.

[ParaguaneroSwag]

Originally Posted by SweethomeSanAntonio

Fiesta San Antonio has been around for more than century and sources estimate 3.5 million in total attendance at its 100 plus events. The biggest Fiesta parade is the Fiesta Night Flambeau brings 750,000 spectators to downtown streets and to its other Fiesta events throughout downtown. The parade has a 1.5 million tv audience.

San Antonio's Rodeo attracts well over 2 million in attendance.

San Antonio has all types of festivals including music festivals that have over 50k in attendance. The music festivals in San Antonio are big but definitely not amongst the largest.

But just like Rodeo Houston isn’t a bigger draw than SXSW despite having the larger attendance, Fiesta San Antonio is a smaller draw than Rodeo Houston (also despite attendance assuming your #s are correct).