Bumbershoot's new look attracts large crowds over Labor Day weekend

Bumbershoot’s triumphant 2023 return after a three-year hiatus surpassed its new organizers' attendance expectations and introduced crowds to a new-look for the festival.

That new look included arts districts, kid-friendly attractions, a cat circus, and of course, plenty of music. Greg Lundgren, co-founder and creative director of New Rising Sun, the new producer of the festival, said that their first Bumbershoot curation was a success.

“We had 40,000 people, which definitely exceeded our expectations,” Lundgren said. “It's like throwing a party. You buy all this food, and you buy all this booze and you're like, ‘I hope people show up’. But we were really pleased with the numbers.”

The last Bumbershoot, back in 2019, was produced by One Real. That event had fewer than 30,000 attendees over the three-day-weekend.

One factor that may have contributed to the increased attendance at this year's two-day event was the reduced ticket prices. Early bird tickets were $50 for one-day pass and $85 for the weekend. Day-of tickets were $75. In 2019, ticket prices started at $109 per day.

Providing affordable tickets to an event this large is not an easy task.

“If you want to create a festival that's inclusive, you have to look at economic inclusivity,” Lundgren said. “The [actual] cost per head is about $120 per person. So in order to subsidize that ticket price, or to bring that cost down, you have to find partners that are willing to help you do that.”

This year, Lundgren said that partnership came from Amazon.

“We were really fortunate that Amazon came on board this year, and wrote a check for a million dollars, which was one of the principal reasons how and why we could reduce ticket prices. Otherwise, without that kind of subsidy, we would have been looking at $150 or $180 per day tickets just to make it happen.”

For Lundgren’s team at New Rising Sun, this first year was a proof of concept, to show potential partnering individuals and corporations that this new version of the festival could work. He hopes that after seeing the success of the event, more partners will step up for future festivals.