Stampede ticket sales on historic pace
Premium seats sell out in record time
The Stampede’s centennial celebration and a booming local economy has officials beaming over record ticket sales on the horizon for corporate venues and Grandstand events.
Ken Knight, premium seating manager for the Calgary Stampede, said four venues located at the Grandstand — the private infield suites, Ranahan’s private club, The Lazy S and 30X Saloon — with a capacity of about 3,400 per day, or about 34,000 people over the 10-day Stampede, are already sold out.
“It’s been sold out for a couple of weeks. It’s the first time in our history that we’ve been sold out this soon and even for some of the venues, (it’s the) first time in our history that we’ve been sold out,” said Knight.
“There’s certainly a renewed optimism in the Calgary business community that we’re seeing. I would say that it’s not the frivolous spending let’s say of 2008, 2007. It’s very planned. It’s thought out. So we see a long time period from people inquiring to when they book. But the money’s there, which is different than certainly 2009 and 2010. We saw it coming back last year but not to this extent.”
The fact it’s the Stampede’s centennial has also sparked interest.
“It’s sort of the not-miss year. If you’re going to take a Stampede off, this is not the one,” said Knight.
He said that, normally, renewals and bookings are taken the day after Stampede for the following year. But last year, everything started earlier, things moved fast and, especially since the new year began, “everything went crazy,” he said.
“Part of that is there’s been so much hype about the centennial. Most of our clients are word of mouth for our venues. They certainly know about Stampede but we don’t really do a lot of advertising about our venues.”
“It’s people who have been guests of someone else or they heard about it. That’s usually how we do a big portion of our selling,” said Knight.
Jason Coxford, ticket sales manager at the Stampede, which includes the Grandstand rodeo and evening shows as well as corporate hosting tents, said interest this year has been extremely high.
On a daily basis, that includes about 20,000 per show — for the rodeo and the evening performance. “We are very close to the levels that we would be at the end of Stampede 2011,” Coxford said of ticket sales. “Our reserved ticket sales right now are close to the end of Stampede 2011. So we’re basically close to a sellout for most evening shows and a few rodeos. We’re probably about 65 per cent ahead of last year at this point.
“We’re really ecstatic at the amount of people that are looking to celebrate the centennial with us. We’re on pace for a record-breaking attendance for the rodeo and evening show for sure.”
Every day, during the 10 days, at 11 a.m. a certain amount of seats are released for that day as well as some standing room tickets. Coxford said an average Stampede will have six to seven out of the 20 shows as complete sellouts. This year, the Stampede is on track to get pretty close to about 16 shows being sold out.
The momentum gaining for this year’s Stampede, July 6 to 15, is picking up, leading to speculation that this could be a record year for attendance at the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth. The all-time attendance record of 1,262,518 was set in 2006. “Everything is shaping up to be a banner year at the Stampede,” said the organization’s spokesperson Doug Fraser. “Only Mother Nature can put a crimp in our expectation right now.”