Are We Seeing The End Of Beer Festivals?

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By Kevin Wilkerson, PubClub.com Beer Blogger

The Oregon Brewers Festival had been in Portland for 30 years, as much a part of the fabric of the city as Mt. Hood and the Trail Blazers. It was held the end of each July in a riverfront park. I know, I stumbled into it one year.

Yet the 2023 event was canceled due to lack of interest (note, the organizers did accept an invitation to take part in a much smaller way at the city’s annual Rose Festival in June). Now when the city that pretty much created craft beer can’t sell enough tickets to its annual event, that’s the canary in the coal mine for beer festivals. A few others have been canceled around the country and I can’t help but ask this question: are we seeing the end of beer festivals?

When craft breweries became big, beer festivals popped up like bread out of a toaster. Suddenly they were everywhere – at movie studios, ballparks, county fairs, outdoor public spaces – and there was one seemingly every other month.

But there is such a things as oversaturation. Just ask NASCAR. Give people too much of a good thing and it ceases to be a novelty. A “I’ll go to the next one” mentality sets in or people say “I just went to one and will pass on this one.”

Then there are the prices. It’s not uncommon for beer festival tickets to cost $50 or even $75.  That’s a lot of money just to drink beer for three to four hours. One could go to a local craft brewery for less, although your average craft brewery doesn’t have the same lively atmosphere as a beer festival. You do pay a bit for the atmosphere at a beer festival.

Organizers cite the rising costs of putting on a beer festival as a reason for the high prices. It’s true they are not inexpensive to organize. But those costs are shared by sponsors and the breweries pay a vendor fee in order to participate, as do all vendors such as those selling merchandise and food trucks. At most beer festivals, the workers are volunteers who basically give up their time in exchange for getting into the festival and, at some point, take part in the tastings.

Of course, organizers don’t put on any festival out of the goodness of their hearts. It’s a business and they expect to make money on them. That’s all a part of the show.

And to be sure, there are still hundreds of annual big beer festivals around the country. But when what was probably the original beer festival, the Oregon Brewers Festival, can’t get enough interest from beer drinkers in the Portland area to make it worthwhile to put on its event, then that should put all organizers on alert.

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