Exhibition Park COO Mike Warkentin. (Lethbridge News Now)

By David Opinko

Whoop-Up Days 2019 had the highest attendance in “the modern era”

Aug 28, 2019 | 5:30 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – Organizers of this year’s Whoop-Up Days festival are extremely pleased with how the event turned out and the number of people who came out.

Although the exact attendance numbers have not been released for the last several years, Exhibition Park COO Mike Warkentin says the 2019 event had 20% more people attend than last year and was 3.3% higher than in 2017, which up until now, had been their record.

The caveat, however, is that “the modern era” includes just the last 10 years.

This was the first year of the StageEX Music Festival, and Warkentin says it was a huge success and was a big part of the higher attendance.

“There’s certainly some things we want to tweak for next year and we’re all compiling notes at this point, but it’s something we can look forward to – growth and expansion in the future.”

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Another new addition this year was the inclusion of designated cannabis smoking areas at the music festival site.

“I was actually shocked with the number of people who used the cannabis consumption sites. I think they were a fantastic addition to the festival. I had no negative comments on them at all, and every night of the festival, they were packed with people.”

Although it is still quite early to be thinking too much about next year’s Whoop-Up Days, Warkentin has a few ideas in mind of how they can continue to improve.

“Obviously getting the information out as early as we possibly can. We’re really excited because there was a lot of learnings that happened. [Exhibition Park CEO Rudy Friesen] alluded to it being a benchmark year for us. Basically, you can look forward to this event getting bigger and better over the next couple of years.”

One thing he did hear from those in attendance was disappointment that there were no classic rock bands at StageEX, but the COO says they had reached out to several artists but none in that genre were able to attend. On the other hand, many were reportedly pleased to see performers from other genres represented, like Lil Jon.

Inquiries were made at Wednesday’s press conference about potentially having Whoop-Up Days continuing into Sunday so as to include the whole weekend, but Warkentin replied that Sundays are generally much slower for festivals, so, at least for the time being, the event will not include Sunday festivities.