Organizers upbeat about Winter Fair attendance

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This article was published 04/04/2022 (1527 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After two years on the shelf, the Royal Manitoba Winter Fair welcomed the return of thousands of guests to Brandon in what event organizers say was a huge achievement.

“To do what we did in a short period of time was quite remarkable,” said Provincial Exhibition of Manitoba president Kathy Cleaver.

“Once we decided to move forward, we committed ourselves to making this a great show, and I’m satisfied that we did just that. I saw a lot of smiling faces this past week and having seen so many friends, who haven’t seen one another for some time, getting together makes me happy.”

The Provincial Exhibition announced the 2022 instalment of the Royal Manitoba Winter Fair welcomed close to 43,000 people through the gates during the six-day event. Over those six days, an average of 7,167 people would have attended each day to meet their figure.

The total tally of people represented the number of scanned tickets at the gate.

In 2019, the Sun reported upward of 100,000 people had attended the Winter Fair based on what was communicated by the Provincial Exhibition.

Rick Dillabough, manager of operations and sponsorship lead for the Provincial Ex, said that figure could have represented anyone passing through their entrance that year, including vendors, trade show participants and repeat guests.

“We’re really encouraged by our attendance numbers this year,” Dillabough said.

“As for the reporting, during the pandemic the Provincial Exhibition implemented a new ticket accounting system, similar to what is being used throughout the industry. It provides a much more accurate picture on who is and how many are attending.”

The ticket-scanning process is what they use for counting attendance at the Brandon Wheat Kings games held at the same facility as the Winter Fair.

“For instance, only those tickets scanned in at the gate registered as an admission, meaning the announced attendance this past week reflected the number of visitors to the fair and not necessarily the number of tickets distributed to sponsors, exhibitors and others,” Dillabough said.

Following the province lifting COVID-19 public health guidelines, Cleaver said they are grateful to have been able to host an event of this calibre once again for western Manitoba. It was the first of its kind in months.

“We’re so fortunate to have had so much support during these trying times,” Cleaver said.

“To think that in February we didn’t know if we’d be able to host the fair, [it’s] just a great job by everyone in helping to pull this off in such a short period of time.”

Now that the Royal Manitoba Winter Fair has come to an end, the Provincial Ex will turn its attention to the annual summer fair, scheduled for June.

» jbernacki@brandonsun.com

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