More than 100,000 people missed the National Western Stock Show this year when the 16-day event returned to Denver as the highly infectious micromicron variant of COVID-19 swept through the state.
Approximately 586,000 people attended the 116th National Western Stock Show, which ended on Sunday. That’s about 18% less pre-pandemic attendance, spokeswoman Karen Woods said in a press release.
The show was canceled last year due to the pandemic. About 708,000 people visited the exchange exhibition in 2020, and just over 700,000 people visited the event two years before.
North Denver’s annual attraction includes livestock auctions, horse shows, and rodeos, as well as hundreds of booths at the indoor trade show. The show was the most attended during its 100th anniversary in 2006, with approximately 726,000 attendees.
“Today we are grateful to host this great event,” National Western President and CEO Paul Andrews said Sunday. “We are overwhelmed by the support and outreach from the nearly 600,000 guests who have returned to celebrate the western lifestyle that is so important to so many.”
This year, the stock show took place despite an increase in COVID-19 cases in Colorado caused by the omicron variant. The exhibition required visitors to wear masks indoors, although some exhibitors said this policy was not enforced. Stock show organizers did not require exhibitors or visitors to be vaccinated.
One of the closing events of the stock show was Friday’s Junior Cattle Auction, in which the Grand Champion bull sold for a record $160,000 and the top eight animals sold for a total of $519,000, Woods said in a statement.
Most of the money goes directly to the young people who raise the animals, and 10% goes to the National Western Scholarship Fund, which funds college scholarships in Colorado and Wyoming.