GRAND ISLAND- Attendance at the Nebraska State Fair was lower than in recent years, likely reflecting continued concerns about the coronavirus pandemic.

Fair officials announced Wednesday that 266,245 people attended the 11-day event in Grand Island. That was about 17,000 fewer people than attended the 2019 fair, and more than 100,000 fewer than the record attendance set in 2017. The fair did not keep official attendance numbers for its scaled-down 2020 event.

Executive Director Bill Ogg said he didn’t want to use the pandemic as an excuse for the lower attendance, “but I do think there was a lingering concern there, and it adversely affected us.”

While officials “wished for more” people, the attendance numbers were satisfactory, he said.

Despite fewer people, Ogg said the fair set a record for gross sales at the carnival. He also said that food and commercial vendors reported increased sales compared with 2019, and there were a record number of competitive entries in most exhibition departments.

“There are many measurements to a successful fair,” Ogg said.

As for the overall financial success of this year’s fair, he said numbers are still being finalized. Revenues and expenses were both higher than what was budgeted, but Ogg said he expects the net result to be very close to the budgeted number.

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