Fountain Valley’s June Summerfest was among best in its history, city reports
Fountain Valley officials provided a review of last month’s Summerfest at the City Council meeting Tuesday, reporting back the event performed among the best it has in its 13-year history.
The community festival, which debuted in 2009, typically takes place the third weekend of June to kick off summer. Rob Frizzelle, the city’s director of community services, shared ride revenue numbers that demonstrated consistent growth for the event.
A reported 15,839 people attended the four-day event at Fountain Valley Sports Park. Roughly 36% of attendees paid for admission online through Eventbrite, allowing the city to see where people were coming from.
“You can see here that the bigger dots are mostly over Fountain Valley and Huntington Beach, but then we also have a nice contingent coming from Los Angeles and other areas, as well,” Frizzelle said while presenting data from online admission sales. “It’s pretty nice to see where they’re coming from. We do feel strongly that this provides a direct economic boost for our community, a direct social boost for our community.”
Frizzelle said Summerfest is intended to be a net-neutral event, and any revenue brought in goes directly into a reserve budget to be put back into the event in the future.
Last year, Summerfest returned as one of the first public gathering events after the state loosened coronavirus pandemic restrictions. Organizers fenced in the event for the first time in 2021 to comply with security guidelines, and 21,095 people attended that year’s festival.
“Comparing it to some previous years, last year was just an anomaly,” Frizzelle said. “We were the first event to be hosted in all of California after the June 15 health update from the governor.
“Last year, we brought in $223,000 in ride revenue. This year, we did $188,000. [That] is by far, outside of last year, the best year we’ve ever had.”
The city receives 27.5% of carnival ride revenue guaranteed, and that cut jumps to 30% when ride sales exceed $100,000, Frizzelle said. The return from this year’s event was $52,857.
Largely local residents attended Summerfest at Fountain Valley Sports Park to enjoy food, music and carnival rides on Father’s Day weekend.
Summerfest included two nights of fireworks, a full-sized community stage featuring local musical talent, and a large main stage entertainment lineup.
In addition, Fountain Valley High School held its Grad Night festivities on the grounds the day prior to the beginning of Summerfest.
“I really like that Grad Night was able to take advantage of that, too, just the most amazing event for high school seniors, the Wednesday before Summerfest starts,” Councilman Glenn Grandis said. “I’d like us to see how we could make sure that they continue to do that, make it affordable for them.”
In a change from last year, attendees for Summerfest were given free parking. The city took in $68,006 in gate revenue.
“It’s really a huge group of people that make the event possible, and 20,000 people from all over the place visiting our city and having a great experience, that’s what parks and [recreation] is all about, so great job,” Mayor Patrick Harper said after hearing the report.
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