The Major League Baseball owner’s lockout isn’t just knocking out spring training games in Surprise and across the league this spring.
The long-awaited, inaugural Surprise Rib Fest Throwdown, which was slated for late April, is now the latest causality from the uncertainty surrounding spring training.
The Tourism Fund Subcommittee voted March 3 to postpone the Rib Fest until the fall and possibly bring it back again in the spring of 2023.
“We’ve been building this up, and I think we owe it to the residents to put on a good show,” said Councilman Patrick Duffy, the chair of the three-person subcommittee.
The Rib Fest has long been planned as a signature event in Surprise, bringing in as many as 20,000 people a day for big name music entertainment and a variety of barbecue food.
It was originally scheduled for April 2020, right after the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the planet. This latest postponement from its April 23 and 24 dates will make it happen 2-1/2 years after first planned.
Sports and Tourism Department Director Kendra Pettis said keeping the festival in April brought some “legitimate risks.”
“A new date in the fall would be way less risk from a scheduling perspective, parking perspective,” Pettis said. “The goal ... is that the first event is very successful, that it’s a good experience both for our residents and tourists that come.”
Major League Baseball owners have signaled that once a deal with the players is done, they still want to stage a four-week spring training season before the delayed regular season starts.
But whether those games — and how many of them —will be in regular spring training homes remains to be seen.
However, if those games were to take place in Surprise at the same time as the April Rib Fest, the spring training contract would require the games to get first dibs on parking.
Without parking, the Rib Fest would not be feasible and the city and partner Forty8 Live would be out the money to pay for the performers.
“It’s a big investment on their side and a big investment on the city side,” Pettis said.
Pettis said the industry has changed to where high-level entertainers are now requiring non-refundable deposits before they perform. Now, a lot of performers are asking for money up front.
“It’s just one of those realities,” Pettis said. “It used to be deposit and you could pay that night.”
The Surprise City Council last year voted to spend up to $500,000 to co-produce the two-day event with Forty8 Live.
Officials with Forty8 Live have previously described an event that would rival the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, California, which brings in 50,000 music fans each spring. However, attendance figures for the Surprise festival are expected to be closer to 20,000 each day, organizers previously said.
Still, it figures to be a carnival atmosphere that includes music acts such as country stars Reba McEntire, Brad Paisley and Eric Church as possible names organizers presented to the City Council last fall.
The event is to include dozens of rib vendors and other food options, carnival rides and other family entertainment.
Azribfestthrowdown.com is still live to update fans about the festival.
Pettis said it would be a couple more weeks before a new date could be found, probably a week or two before Thanksgiving, and right after the Arizona Fall League baseball season.
Joe Bertoletti, assistant sports and tourism director, noted Country Thunder in Florence successfully pulled off a festival in October 2021 instead of its normal April schedule, when it had to move because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“We’ve had some movement in the market of traditional shows at the same time every year making up one and going less than 12 months later to go again,” Bertoletti said.
If Surprise pulls off a similar feat, that could mean two big festivals here within six months.
“[Forty8 Live] thinks April makes the most sense from a marketing perspective [after] spring training,” Pettis said.
All three on the subcommittee ultimately voted to move this year’s to November to avoid any potential spring training conflict.
“You control what you can control, and you can control moving it,” Duffy said.
Editor’s Note: Jason Stone can be reached at jstone@iniusa.org.
Jason Stone Senior News Editor | Surprise @thestonecave
Meet Jason Jason Stone joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2019, after a distinguished three decade media career that included stops at the Arizona Republic, iHeart Media/Clear Channel and Beckett Sports Card magazine. He remembers when airports sold newspapers.
Community: He is a big supporter of the Valley's original sports team: The Phoenix Suns.
Education: Northern Arizona University with a BS in broadcast journalism and a minor in sports coaching.
Random Fact: The capital of Nebraska is Lincoln.
Hobbies: Surfing, backgammon and men who aren't afraid to cry.
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