bumbershoot hasn’t been free for 26 years
Every year, as Labor Day rolls around, people always seem to talk about Bumbershoot and how much it now costs to spend the day at Seattle Center. Almost always, these discussions involve someone bringing up the good old days when the festival used to cost nothing to attend. Curious about just how long ago this utopian free era was, I did a little Nexis-ing to chart ticket prices over the 36-year Bumbershoot history and found that people have been paying since at least 1980:
The Seattle Times only has online archives dating back to 1990, but that year included a 20-year anniversary story [#] which mentioned a change in pricing structure coinciding with OneReel’s takeover of production duties in 1980. In that year, the festival moved from charghing $8-9 for select acts to a $2.50 full-festival daily admission. For the most part, it seems like tickets were all-access (one exception: a 1994 mainstage show by Sunny Day Real Estate and Sky Cries Mary commanded an additional $10 for entry). Since then, prices have steadily climbed to this year’s $30 per day charge, not including the cost of shortcake or elephant ears.
Any anecdotal evidence to fill in the pricing blanks between 1971 and 1980?
update: A little context from Bumbershoot’s communication department after the jump
… When the City of Seattle operated the festival, it was free. That was from 1971-1979. The festival was much more akin to Seattle Folklife at that point, and not particularly focused on National acts but more as a city-wide festival of art and culture.
After the festival of 1979 The City was no longer going to produce the festival, as the NEA kept shrinking the grant funding and the City couldn’t support the rising cost of the festival alone. They approached One Reel to produce the show, and in 1980, the Seattle Center Grounds became a closed venue for Bumbershoot. They charged a ticket price, a whopping $2, and $0.50 for kids. One Reel started bringing in hip, new and popular National acts along with the established tradition of showcasing local and regional talent.
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Nice chart! Well done. You should forecast ahead 4 or 5 years :) I’ve been here since ‘96 and somehow convinced myself that Bumbershoot had been free. Now I have to admit that I really am just getting too old for music fests and the price of ticket has nothing to do with my withering enthusiasm for the event.
Josh, your genius with charts and graphs is astounding.
an out of sample prediction based on the current data suggests that the 2010 daily ticket price would be $38.
want to make a completely irresponsible calculation of your own? thanks to fractional polynomials and linear regression, hours and hours of fun can be yours for the price of a basic scientific calculator:
1. x = year/10
2. y1 = x^3 - 7948112.585
3. y2 = x^3*ln(x) -42094383.35
4. price = 10.51068 -0.0962149(y1) + .0171088(y2)
According to this inflation calculator, those $2.50 tickets from 1980 would cost $6.35 in 2005 dollars. And this year’s $30 tix are the equivalent of $11.81 in 1980 dollars.
I have no brilliant analysis to add to that.
It is worth remembering that tickets are considerably cheaper if you buy in advance. This year, a three-day pass cost $50 and daily tickets cost $18. Given the price that you’d pay to see one of the artists at a club, the charges are reasonable.
Bumbershoot is considerably less expensive than other festivals like Coachella and Bonnaroo, but, as much as I like many of the artists performing this year, the quality of the headliners does differ substantially.