Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Fair organizers credit marketing for attendance

Ads on "big radio stations" put the Dade City event on the map, drawing record crowds.

By KIT INGALLS
Published February 27, 2007

DADE CITY - People flocked to the fair in record numbers this year, Pasco County Fair organizers said as the event ended its 60th year.

"Our final number will be between 43,000 and 44,000," general manager Clark Converse said.

This year's attendance is a 10 percent increase over the previous record, set last year.

Converse attributes the growth in attendance to several factors - warm weather, better marketing, a growing market, engaging entertainment, more livestock entries, and the rodeo, which this year was free with fair admission.

"You can't see a PRCA (Professional Rodeo Cowboys' Association) rodeo for seven dollars anywhere," he says. "Even if you didn't want to come to the fair, it would be a heck of a deal."

"We really pushed advertising this year with some big radio stations," says annual chairman Tracy Thompson, who adds that people called from New Tampa, Wesley Chapel and Trinity asking how to find the fair. "A lot of people really have no idea of where Dade City is.

"We've been told this, too, by people calling from the Tampa area, that they feel like our fair is a little safer for their kids because we're more compact than say the state fair, where it's a lot bigger," Thompson adds. "We're getting new people every year."

Fair membership sales to families and individuals increased 30 percent over last year, to more than 700. "Over 60 years, I don't know if it's a record, but it's certainly the most we've had in recent years," Converse said.

"This is a record year for us financially," he added.

"We're not subsidized," Thompson said. "It's all private. We don't get any funding from the county or the state."

The nonprofit Pasco County Fair Association, chartered in 1947, owns the fairgrounds.

Fair attendance, memberships, booth space rentals, year-round building rentals, and fundraisers all contribute money.

"For 60 years, it's been done through volunteers," Thompson said. "That's what makes the history for me. We couldn't even put on the fair if it was not for the volunteers."

He estimates that 300 people volunteer during the week of the fair, working in shifts of three to four hours.

The Fair Association has three paid employees; two run the office, and the third handles maintenance.

Converse, Thompson and all the fair's officers, directors, exhibit and show coordinators, and committee members are volunteers.

"We do it because we love it," Thompson said.

[Last modified February 26, 2007, 23:57:46]