Attendance for Treefort was down nearly 40% due to organizers limiting ticket sales in order to hold a safe event. According to Treefort Music Festival, it’s estimated that 80-85% of attendees were fully vaccinated.
Attendance for Treefort was down nearly 40% due to organizers limiting ticket sales in order to hold a safe event. According to Treefort Music Festival, it’s estimated that 80-85% of attendees were fully vaccinated.
Treefort returned to downtown Boise after postponing the 2020 festival twice.
Treefort 9 saw attendance down nearly 40% due to limiting ticket sales. There were 15,475 total attendees over the five days. In comparison, Treefort 8 in 2019 saw 25,424 attendees over five days and Treefort 7 in 2018 saw 23,601 attendees at the festival.
“Everything was really scaled back. We had less bands, we had less programming. We had less attendees and so it was smaller, but honestly that made it more manageable for us,” said Treefort Publicist Marissa Lovell. “I think it just helped people feel safer too.”
The festival also required and strictly enforced COVID-19 safety guidelines. All attendees, volunteers, staff and performers had to have proof of a COVID-19 vaccination or a negative virus test, attendance was limited and masks were required to be worn at all times when social distancing wasn’t an option. According to Treefort Music Fest, 80 — 85% of attendees were fully vaccinated. Free vaccinations were also offered onsite and 76 people did get vaccinated at Treefort.
Of the 695 people who were tested onsite, 18 tested positive; the people who tested positive were not pass holders and were sent off to quarantine.
Mirroring the lower attendance, the festival also brought in fewer bands to perform, according to Lovell. She said that between 375 and 400 bands performed with roughly 180 of them being local. In 2019, Treefort brought in about 500 bands.
“It was pretty challenging going into it. We had postponed it twice and so we spent 18 months planning it, which is a very long time for us to be planning Treefort. We usually don’t do it for that long,” Lovell said.
“And honestly it went so well. We were very, very pleasantly surprised by how people showed up and were just like, cool, this is what we’re doing. We’re wearing masks, we’re being safe, and it just seemed like people were really genuinely happy to be there and more than willing to do whatever they needed to do to make that happen.”
Economy boost
An estimate prepared by the Boise Convention and Visitors Bureau said the 2018 festival brought in $10.9 million to Boise’s local economy, including money spent by visitors on hotel rooms, food, drinks, event tickets and transportation. It is not known what economic impact Treefort 9 brought to the community.
Treefort Music Festival will return for its 10th festival on March 23 — 27, 2022. Tickets for the festival are on sale today for Wefunder investors and will open to the general public in early October.
Duck Club Entertainment, the organization that puts on Treefort, will now require the same COVID-19 safety guidelines — proof of vaccination or negative test and masks — for all of its live music events.
A full schedule of live music for the upcoming months can be viewed at theduckclub.com.
