Bayfest 2025 has been cancelled. Organizers said a combination of “logistical complications, significantly increased production costs, and the rising cost of the U.S. dollar have made it financially unfeasible to move forward.”
Dave Allen, with Acadia Broadcasting, said, “Additionally, ticket sales have not reached the levels necessary to support the scale and quality of the event we strive to deliver.”
All tickets purchased through Bayfest’s official ticket provider, Front Gate Tickets, will automatically be refunded in roughly 30 days.
“Ticket sales were pretty light,” Allen said. “We were hoping they’d be better, and we were hoping to have a festival back in the city from last year’s festival. But we’ll take a year off and re-look at it.”
In July of 2024, Acadia’s Country on the Bay brought headliner Blake Shelton along with a surprise visit from his wife, Gwen Stefani, both of whom lit up the stage, invigorating more than 6,500 people in attendance that evening.
Allen wouldn’t say that this year’s concert-goers lost interest in the classic rock lineup.
“Every year we did a Countryfest, and it didn’t matter what year, we were averaging upwards of 5,500 people on each of the three days. It didn’t matter who the acts were,” he said.
“There are quite a few classic rock people and the people who wanted Bluesfest back, and we just changed it. This year, we wanted to try classic rock and go from that. We didn’t want people saying, ‘I don’t want to buy a weekend pass just to see three country acts spread out through the weekend,’ so we thought we’d try this and it didn’t sell the way we hoped.”
Allen said they didn’t make as much as they needed to cover the costs of some of Country on the Bay’s performers.
“There’s a huge gap between classic rock, pop and country right now — the country artists are very expensive, that’s the problem,” Allen said.
“If we’re going to bring that in, the people (in Thunder Bay) need to support it. Logistically, it’s a huge expense for everything, because we don’t have any facilities here. Everything’s got to be brought in from staging to dressing rooms. . . And that all costs money.
“The sound stuff has to come out of Saskatchewan, the stage comes out of Quebec. So that’s where the expenses are, and then there’s the cost of the band and how to get the bands here.”
Allen said there are also meals and lodging for the performers. Last year, the radio station booked more than 300 rooms in local hotels to accommodate the performers.
Concerts like Bayfest and Country on the Bay also drive tourism. Allen said last year, 3,300 people from the area purchased tickets. The rest were from out of town.
“We had every province covered and about 50 per cent of the U.S. covered,” he said.
“We even had people from Switzerland here. Whether they were travelling through, they still came to the festival.”
Allen said they monitor the attendance through ticket purchases, which gives them locations where the ticket sales are going.
“We know the areas that they’re all coming from,” he said, adding, we know we had people from southern Ontario and people from the U.S., because they’re camping at the (Thunder City Speedway) racetrack.
“So 3,300 out of the 5,500 were from Thunder Bay, and half of it was from out of town and that’s a huge tourism boost. And that’s 5,500 every day.”
Allen pointed out that charitable organizations that benefited from proceeds from the annual festivals will lose out this year.
He said they have probably put $300,000 back into the community.
“It’s going to be a huge hit (for these organizations) this summer,” Allen said.
He noted that the trade war between the U.S. and Canada is not helping matters, especially with the uncertainty.
“We tried to do it,” he said. “We’ve pushed it right till the very end.”
