Salmon Festival a financial flop, town reveals

This year's Salmon Festival has left Grand Falls-Windsor with a serious financial dent, figures released by the town council show.

The festival headlined this year by pop group Maroon 5 ran a deficit of $476,899.

A little over 8,000 people bought tickets to the festival, which also featured Pitbull and Simple Plan a far cry from the 21,343 fans who paid to see The Eagles in 2013.

• Smaller crowds but no problems at 2014 Salmon Festival

"We're a little disappointed, but we take it as a part of the risks that go with hosting large-scale concerts," said Salmon Festival chair Darren Finn, who reported to council on Tuesday night.

This year's youth-oriented lineup met with a lukewarm reaction from some long-time fans of the Salmon Festival.

Finn said that while there were problems with nailing things down this year including changing the date to accommodate booked acts the reaction generally was fine.

"We were late securing our entertainment, we did change the dates, there were some discontent from concertgoers from the previous year," Finn told CBC News.

"However we dealt with all those issues, and we had a fabulous event. For those who went to the event, it was an excellent festival."

The 2013 festival turned a profit, but also sparked numerous complaints, particularly over poor access to water and overcrowding in some areas of the grounds.

Finn said the town had banked about $225,000 from its previous festivals, which featured headliners like Aerosmith and Kiss.

Finn said the concert promoter also lost money. The agreement with the town lasts for another two years, meaning that the Salmon Festival will continue to aim for bigconcerts.