Bret Michaels at this year's Riverbend Festival
photo by Mark Herndon
The Riverbend Festival is expected to be trimmed to four or five days in 2019, according to several sources.
The popular festival in early June centered at Ross's Landing Park on the riverfront has long started on a Friday and continued the next week until the grand finale on Saturday night.
Chip Baker, executive director of Friends of the Festival that operates the event, said there have been discussions, "but no final decision has been made."
He said, "We will have a press conference when there is a final decision."
A downtown business official said one reason may be "the disruptions for business during a busy part of the tourist season."
He also said, "Putting on the Riverbend Festival over 10 days is a tremendous amount of work. You've got to coordinate a lot of volunteers and provide all the sound systems and video. There are many moving parts to putting on the Riverbend Festival."
The analyst said another possible reason was to save money. He said, "It's not possible to determine if that is correct because Riverbend has never given a public accounting on their finances or on ticket sales."