Whether it's your first Bonnaroo or you’re a music festival veteran, we welcome you to Inforoo.
Here you'll find info about artists, rumors, camping tips, and the infamous Roo Clues. Have a look around then create an account and join in the fun. See you at Bonnaroo!!
Would that be a record? I thought 71k was the highest attendance in 2011?
Edit: never mind. According to Wikipedia that’s not even close to the record. However, I find these numbers dubious....
These numbers are definitely off. According to several of the older-time vets who were on here when I first joined, 2004 had close to 100,000; it became an overcrowded mudpit, and after that, Roo started to cap it around 80k. 2011 had way more people than 2012 - I don't know exact numbers, but it was a good 12-15% more crowded, not the other way around. I'm pretty sure they pushed it to the mid-high 80s that year, just because Eminem was bringing them their strongest sales in several years.
'08 and '09 look more or less accurate. I don't know enough about years I didn't attend to comment... except for '16 barely being half full. Ouch.
2014 felt crowded as hell. but it was kanye reunion and elton john that year with an amazing undercard lineup!! Every year since then has been nice and breezy and small crowds. I'm going to miss that this year but welcome the bigger crowd!
The numbers above were backed out of ticket sales. The figure given to vendors—76,000 this year—might include volunteers, other comps, etc., so it might be a little inflated, though I’m not sure by how much. Just something to consider. We don’t quite have a 100% apples to apples comparison unfortunately, but this is pretty close.
The numbers above were backed out of ticket sales. The figure given to vendors—76,000 this year—might include volunteers, other comps, etc., so it might be a little inflated, though I’m not sure by how much. Just something to consider. We don’t quite have a 100% apples to apples comparison unfortunately, but this is pretty close.
I went back and checked, in 2016 vendors were given an estimate of 46k and the actual was 45,537, so it’ll probably be pretty close.
Post by Jake Jortles on May 8, 2018 11:50:57 GMT -5
Surprised to see '15 with a slightly higher attendance than '14. That year felt like the first year that it was declining from '13 and '14. It was the first year they allowed general campers to park vertically next to their camping space. That gave everyone much more room for camp and I assumed it meant that there was more room to give due to a lower attendance. It also just felt like crowds were lighter that year. Then again, Mumford may have had an even larger crowd than McCartney did.
What needs to be remembered is that the official count was really loose until Coffee County instituted the $3 tax on each ticket. After that the count needed to be a firm count to pay the appropriate tax. In 2002 and 2003 ticket counts were loose and many people would sneak through he fence. But the venue was much emptier because the corporate sponsors were much fewer and the police presence was minimal. You could actually have lots of privacy in Centeroo. My estimate would be 100,000+ those first 3 years.
In 2004 Roo started to get noticed by the establishment. The State did not approve the ticket tax but they began sending State tax personnel into the venue to remind everyone they had to charge sales tax and submit it to the State. (I must have had 20 tax forms when I left and I wasn't selling anything.) Roo also started cutting down on independent vendors and forcing people to sell on Shakedown. Before that there were hundreds, if not thousands, of "Hippie vans" selling veggie burritos and such. It was then that corporations began to grab their space of Centeroo as well.
I do not remember when the ticket tax started (probably 2005 or 2006) but the count definitely became fairly accurate by then as negotiations to the tax amount would be affected by attendance. And rates corporations would be willing to pay would depend on and require reliable attendance figures.
And so that being said, I would say from experience that 2002-2004 had attendance figures of over 100,000 and 2003 or 2004 would have the highest actual attendance. But no way to prove that.
