It is unclear how many people will be on set in Park City during the Sundance Film Festival in January.
As Sundance enters the final weeks of preparations for what will be the first in-person festival during the coronavirus era, organizers have acknowledged it is difficult to provide an estimated crowd size.
Sundance officials appeared at a recent Park City Council meeting to discuss a range of operational changes to the event, but some of the notable statements centered on expectations for the number of people who will be in Park City for the festival.
Betsy Wallace, the managing director of Sundance, offered limited information in response to a question by City Councilor Steve Joyce regarding estimates for the crowd size in 2022 as compared to the festivals in the time before the pandemic.
Wallace noted the plans for the festival in January are scaled back from the pre-coronavirus era. The plans include the elimination of three screening rooms in the Park City area — the MARC Theatre, the Park Avenue Theatre and the Temple Theatre. The MARC Theatre is normally the second-largest screening room in the Park City area.
“That’s a hard question to answer because we reduced the number of theaters, which we anticipate will reduce quite a few seats in theaters and people here,” Wallace said in response to the inquiry by Joyce.
She also said the festival will be a hybrid event with live screenings and online ones, explaining it is unclear how the two formats will influence each other.
“I do think that as time moves forward you’re going to see people either move more online or feel comfortable about being here in person, but for us to make a crystal ball judgment, I’m not sure,” Wallace said.
Mayor Andy Beerman and the City Council did not spend extensive time on the topic of crowd projections, but the statements by Wallace were important nonetheless as the community is expected to turn its attention to Sundance shortly after New Year’s. The festival is scheduled to run from Jan. 20 until Jan. 30.
Sundance is by a wide margin the largest special event on Park City’s calendar. The festival in the pre-pandemic era drew giant crowds of industry figures, film lovers, celebrity gawkers and the entertainment media, with the first four days being especially busy. Traffic is notoriously some of the worst of the year, Main Street sidewalks are shoulder-to-shoulder with the crowds and parking availability is oftentimes extraordinarily tight.
The lack of details from Sundance about the estimated crowd size will likely be of note to the business community, including the lodging, restaurant and transportation sectors. The three usually enjoy marked increases in numbers during Sundance, and many businesses in the pre-coronavirus era hired reinforcement staffing for the festival.
A Sundance-commissioned report detailing the economic impacts of the festival in 2020, which was held shortly before the coronavirus-forced shutdowns, estimated approximately 116,800 people attended that year. Spending was estimated at $150.4 million, with people from outside of Utah accounting for $134.9 million of the total. Lodging was the No. 1 category of spending, estimated at approximately $63.4 million.
Someone from outside of Utah spent an average of $605 per day while at Sundance in 2020, and Utah residents spent an average of $96 each day, the report found.
Sundance seems likely to be the largest event held in Park City since the start of the pandemic. Organizers and public-health officials are finalizing plans designed to guard against the spread of the coronavirus. Sundance has crafted coronavirus-fighting measures that rely heavily on testing requirements for many who will be in attendance.