The Blue Angels, the Navy’s flagship aviation team, won’t fly over Downtown Evansville during next summer’s ShrinersFest.
Not only that, but organizers for the Evansville Freedom Festival Hadi ShrinersFest said Wednesday they won’t be bringing back any air shows to Dress Plaza.
The reason: It costs too much.
Corporate sponsorships have dwindled over recent years, and with limited income sources and mounting costs, the Hadi Shriners chose to scrap the popular air shows at the summer festival.
Event spokesman Dale Thomas said the decision was not made lightly.
“We know the impact is hard and the disappointment it will cause, but we can’t see how it can be paid for,” he said.
The festival has never lost money, but Thomas said the uncertainty in profits next summer is something the organization can’t stomach.
“It puts the nonprofit side at risk. ... We have to be able to make money out of this in some shape, way or form,” he said.
Basic costs of the festival total about $150,000, Thomas said. The Blue Angels require a separate air event be built around its air show, meaning the total cost of the air shows alone would be about $170,000.
Festival organizers did not want to raise button prices, which cost $5 this year, to view the air show.
Had organizers bumped up buttons to $10, which they considered, and they sold the same amount of buttons as they did this year, they could feasibly pull off breaking even, Thomas said.
But that’s if the weather is good.
In 2013, storms effectively shutdown half of the festival’s weekend.
This past summer’s event was heralded for its nice weather, however.
“We sold the most buttons we’ve ever sold with great weather and didn’t make much. What happens if the weather is bad?” Thomas said.
He noted most Blue Angels air shows charge $20-25 a ticket, a price local organizers have no interest in charging.
Organizers reached out to Mayor Lloyd Winnecke’s office, Growth Alliance for Greater Evansville and the Evansville Convention & Visitors Bureau for help finding funding sources to no avail.
“Maybe there’s a white knight out there that we’re not aware of that’s willing to step up and say, ‘We’re willing to bring this to Evansville,” Thomas said.
Evansville has a fickle history with the Blue Angels.
The group has performed in Evansville three times since 2000 — in 2001, 2002 and 2005.
Since then, the team has twice canceled scheduled appearances.
The Blue Angels were set to perform during the 2011 Freedom Festival, but the appearance was one of several canceled after the team was put on a training stand-down after one of the pilots performed a maneuver too low to the ground during a show in Virginia.
They were also scheduled to appear here in 2013 over the Fourth of July weekend before federal budget cutbacks under sequestration scrubbed the show.
Festival organizers also have nixed the idea of bringing back hydroplane races. Thomas told the Courier & Press last month that the boat races could cost as much as $200,000.
A popular event for the 2014 festival was a D-Day re-enactment that attracted about 30,000 people to Dress Plaza. The group estimated 70,000 people went to the four-day festival this year. They sold 16,000 buttons for the weekend.
Some sort of military re-enactment will be back in 2015, but Thomas said organizers over the next few months are going to decide what direction to take the festival.
“We’re redefining what ShrinersFest is going to look like; go back to the roots of the street festival. We’ll decide not just what to watch but to participate in,” he said.
The number of rides will be doubled, and will be bigger, he said. Other ideas pitched include a karaoke contest with cash prizes and a battle of the bands, but everything’s on the table he said.
“I’d love to see any organization that has an idea or wants to do something to come to us. This isn’t just our festival — it’s still the Evansville Freedom Festival Hadi ShrinersFest,” he said.
The 2015 festival is set for June 25-28.