Fair Attendance Down, Profits Up

By Jennifer Loren, News On 6

TULSA, OK -- The folks at the Tulsa State Fair say they made more money at the gate this year than last year. But The News On 6 has obtained documents questioning how well the fair kept track of those numbers in years past and the amount of money they've made off ticket sales.

With those questions raised in the past we wanted to know how the fair kept track of attendance at this year's fair.

Fair administrators say 915,000 attended this year's fair. That's 72,000 fewer people than last year. Yet somehow the fair made more money at the gate this year than last year.

"We didn't raise prices at the gate but gate attendance was up 9%. That means a lot to me and it means a lot to the investment that Tulsa made in these wonderful fairgrounds," said Expo Square CEO Mark Andrus.

Andrus says attendance numbers at the state fair are just estimates. If that's true the fairs' estimate in 2007 must have been way off.

Attendance was reported to be 987,057 people, if you multiply that by the cheapest ticket sold, four dollars, the sales should have been at least $3.9 million. However, the fair only reported $1.6 million in sales.

That's a large discrepancy, one the Andrus says he's aware of, but doesn't have the answer as to why it's there.

"I'm not in any way suspicious of what happened prior to me. I just know that we don't steal, we count right and every dollar that we got for a ticket is a dollar that's now in F&M Bank and we'll be reinvesting it in this place," said Andrus.

This year he says he says he estimated attendance differently.

In years past they used a clicker to keep track of attendance.

"In the past if I would come in and out of the gate ten times then if we had clickers on the gate then I would have been clicked ten times. I just didn't see that as the best and most true estimate," said Andrus.

But even this year, the 915,000 fairgoers are just an estimate.

The money made in gate sales goes toward operations at Expo Square. The News On 6 will continue to follow the numbers at the fairgrounds and have more answers for you as we get them.