2019 Bayou Country Superfest Attendance Less Than Half Its Last Baton Rouge Appearance

Bayou Country Superfest over Memorial Day weekend at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge drew only about 50,000 people. That is less than half the crowd that showed up the last time the two-day country music event was held in the Capital City.

Festival Productions Inc., which produces the event, announced the attendance in a press release on Wednesday. They would not comment further about the festival.

One of the reasons that attendance may have been down is that the festival lineup wasn't announced until Valentine's Day. In past years, the Superfest lineup was announced before Thanksgiving. This allows people to buy tickets as Christmas gifts and gave them more time to plan for the busy Memorial Day holiday weekend.

The first Bayou Country Superfest in 2010 brought more than 85,000 people, laying stake that it would be an annual event in Baton Rouge.

Attendance steadily grew and peaked in 2014, when the festival added Friday to its schedule. That year it attracted 135,000 people.

Around 125,000 attended in 2015 and about 100,000 in 2016 to the three-day event.

The next two years, the festival was forced to move to New Orleans due to renovations to Tiger Stadium. In 2017, the two-day festival at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome only drew about 60,000.

Last year, the event was scaled back to one day, but with an impressive lineup highlighted by George Strait and Chris Stapleton. That event sold out all 53,000 tickets.

Another hypothesis by some is that many of this year's headliner acts had played the event multiple times already and for that, the shows didn't offer as much "new" as fans were hoping for.