Blame My Roots Fest Organizers Hope For More Attendance As Event Comes Third Year | News, Sports, Jobs

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ST CLAIRSVILLE – The third annual Blame My Roots Festival, held at the Valley View Campgrounds in Belmont County, kicked off ticket sales at 10 a.m. Tuesday morning and officials, along with the local tourism office, expect an even bigger year in 2022.

BMR co-founder Chris Dutton expects ticket sales to increase from last summer, when people were still worried about the COVID-19 situation, which spanned a range of logistics.

Dutton also spoke of upcoming upgrades, some that the public might not see but address “features and experiences” that took place during the 2021 festival. He said the VIP cabin area will also be expanded.

“We have a few surprises in store that we’re not really announcing yet,” Dutton said, adding that Thursday night will be a different opening than they’ve shown in the past with the return of Nikko Moon.

“This launch party will be much bigger than what we’ve done in the past,” Dutton explained, but the surprises he declined to detail are still being worked out.

The COVID crisis has obviously hurt, as most other businesses have suffered as well, with the cancellation of the 2020 festival and ticket sales so far down this year compared to their first festival held in 2019.

“We know people just weren’t prepared to take the risk,” Dutton said. “We know people just weren’t comfortable, still aren’t, even this fall.”

Dutton felt it was a fair accomplishment to get the 2021 gig off the ground considering all the unknowns. What he felt even more hurt was the fact that there hadn’t been a lot of shows before this year’s BMR.

“We couldn’t really take advantage of too many other shows to see how they handled from a production standpoint, could we? How they handled this, how they handled this… we didn’t know how a lot of these artists were going to act once they got on the pitch, ”Dutton said. “I’m proud of the team we had that was able to pull it off. “

He expects ticket sales to rise well from the weekend’s 2021 figures, which were over 12,000, and is confident they will be eclipsed in 2022. A promising sign is this. he called their loyalty pre-sale sales starting in November – where people who have already purchased tickets for previous festivals bought tickets without knowing the lineup – sold out. General admission and VIP tickets have also sold out, and cabana sales have doubled from last summer for this same presale group.

He called BMR a small but growing festival where they have to work to gain the trust of artists, where he described it as pushing the cart, “not us”.

“We’re new and we’re competing with Live Nation, so you really have to stand up for yourself,” Dutton said. “It’s really important to do the backstage well, to do the production stuff well, to treat the managers well, to make sure that these people feel good coming to your festival.”

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