‘Million dollar range’, Exhibition Park CEO shares cost to host Whoop-Up Days

This year’s Whoop-Up Days was quite a success with over 23,000 guests making their way through the gates at Exhibition Park. Those numbers are down, however, from previous years. In terms of how much revenue the city saw from the five-day event, Mike Warkentin with Exhibition Park says they are still working on those numbers.

“This is a significantly costly event to put on. Obviously, the ideal situation would be to be able to open this up but there is some real costs to building this level of community. It’s a significant expense and this year was a scaled-back version because of the construction limitations on our site but it’s in the million dollar range at the scaled-back version of what we put on. As we grow that portfolio, that cost to put this event on will increase,” said Mike Warkentin, CEO of Lethbridge & District Exhibition.

A community survey will be going out to everyone who attended Whoop-Up Days. Warkentin says the survey is an opportunity for people to offer opinions on what they would like to see at future events.