The goal for the Outside Festival was to create a first-of-its-kind event that blends music, films, gear demos, panel discussions and an outdoor industry trade show into a gathering that becomes a must-attend annual event for consumers and outdoor industry insiders.
With about 18,000 visitors crowding into Denver’s Civic Center park and Denver Art Museum last weekend, organizers are calling the festival a glowing success and plans are underway for next year’s early-June gathering.
“I’m over the moon. We are ready to keep building on this momentum,” said Conor Hall, the head of Colorado’s outdoor recreation office, which partnered with Outside Inc. to host the Outside Festival. “Colorado is a leader in so many ways in growing all these different components of the outdoor recreation economy and culture and it’s time for us to wholly own that. This is how Colorado becomes a national leader in outdoor recreation.”
Hall had just stepped into the outdoor recreation office when the owners of the Outdoor Retailer trade shows announced they were moving the twice-a-year gatherings back to Utah, dealing a blow to the Colorado outdoor industry that had lured the influential event to the state in 2017. Hall, displaying the optimism that abounds in outdoor recreation, said the departure of the trade show was an opportunity to create something better, with events and activities that were not just for businesses but consumers as well. In the past few years, he has promised “a South by Southwest for the outdoors,” suggesting a new event could rival the Austin, Texas, gathering that draws more than 350,000 attendees.
“It was crazy to say that two years ago,” Hall said. “It’s not crazy anymore.”
For years outdoor gear brands have been grousing about the cost of the Outdoor Retailer trade shows. The venerable event has evolved from an essential business-to-business, or B2B, trade show — where brands and retailers inked merchandise deals on the show floor — into a gathering with speakers, panels, education and events. The Outside Festival wanted to accelerate that evolution, with an industry gathering and business trade show joining a consumer-oriented music and film festival.
“It was not just about music or films. It was not just B2B. It was not just about consumers. It was all of it wrapped into one. It felt like we were putting on six festivals at the same time,” said Jon Dorn, the chief entertainment officer at Boulder-based Outside Inc. who estimates he’s been to more than 50 national outdoor industry trade shows in his 25-year career. “For me, this is a high-water moment and maybe the best thing I’ve been involved in. As someone who has been in this industry for a long time, I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Outside’s early projections — presented to the Colorado Economic Development Commission in 2023 in a plea for funds initially set to support Outdoor Retailer trade shows in Denver — estimated 10,000 attendees in the first year of the festival would generate an economic impact around $4.7 million. By 2027, Outside and the outdoor recreation office estimated 70,000 Outside Festival attendees would generate a $54 million impact.
Early attendance counts show about 18,000 people passed through Civic Center park over the weekend. When snowboarding legend Shaun White spoke at the Denver Art Museum, more than 750 people packed the auditorium, missing a performance by musician Andrew Bird at the festival across the street.
On the Thursday before the weekend, conservation leaders gathered to celebrate land protection. On Friday, the Outside Industry Summit included panels with Colorado Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, Southern Ute leaders and Colorado politicians talking about the intersection of politics and the burgeoning outdoor recreation industry. The summit included panels on sustainability, diversity, workforce development and a hiring event with more than 30 brands.
That night, outdoor business leaders and politicians gathered for a quiet dinner to discuss challenges and opportunities in the outdoor economy.
On Saturday, there were six bands on the festival stage, 10 films rolling at the museum and five presentations by the likes of White, Protect Our Winters founder Jeremy Jones and Utah senator candidate Caroline Gleich. The Sunday lineup was just as deep, alongside climbing competitions at a wall sponsored by The North Face and other brand events in Civic Center park.
The weekend was a model for a new type of gathering for the outdoor industry, Dorn and Hall said.
“I think the days of massive, pure B2B national trade shows are kind of over,” Dorn said. “To me, what the future holds — and obviously I’m a little biased here — is a show that welcomes consumers but is still really functional for brands that are looking to create awareness around new products and offerings.”
The festival was raging, but traffic at the no-cost Big Gear Show across Broadway in front of the Capitol was less busy. Last year the Big Gear Show and (e)revolution electric bike showcase opened to the public, offering consumers a chance to visit with about 100 outdoor business exhibitors and 40 e-bike brands. Attendance was not overwhelming last year and it did not grow much this year.
“The crowds were good but we want more, more exhibitors and more visitors,” said Kenji Haroutunian, the director of the Big Gear Show who also ran Outdoor Retailer for several years. “Last year we spent a lot of energy and resources in getting the word out to the public and it had pretty marginal results. So having a partner like Outside do what they do really well — which is reach the consumer in a really unique way — definitely helped.”
Haroutunian said while traffic remained similar to last year, bike brands sold dozens of e-bikes to consumers. Paddle board companies and camping gear brands also posted strong sales, he said. He’d like to see more outdoor shop owners involved.
“The next horizon for us is to get more retailers engaged,” he said. “What we are trying to do with Outside, the state and the city and all our industry partners is to create enough critical mass to make this a must-attend event. That means having as many things going on as possible. It’s really difficult to make it all work in the first year but I really think this was a successful first outing.”
Hall said the business angle of the festival will be part of ongoing discussions as organizers map out the future of the Outside Festival.
“Should we lean harder into the direct-to-consumer piece? In many ways that makes the most sense and the trade show becomes something else entirely. Maybe it makes more sense to keep these things together?” Hall said. “Before this was a hypothetical and visionary. Now we have something really tangible to respond to and tweak and evolve as part of a bigger, broader conversation about what worked well and what are the things that don’t make sense in the overall picture.”
Of the roughly 6,000 tickets sold — organizers gave away a lot of tickets to nonprofits and other groups to buoy attendance — about 30% were purchased by non-white people, giving organizers a sign that their efforts to reach a more diverse audience were working. And about 20% of the ticket buyers came from out-of-state, roughly double initial projections. Early survey results show about 80% of the attendees plan to return next year, Dorn said. Another highlight: about 5% of the waste from the festival ended up in a landfill, supporting the festival’s efforts to be sustainable with recycling and no single-use plastics.
And those tickets were very cheap; at least half the cost of most music festivals. That’s by design as the Outside Festival launched.
The “crazy low” prices in the first year were to give a broader audience more opportunity to experience the festival, Dorn said. Prices will increase next year but not by much, he said, with organizers looking to maybe increase prices for VIP packages to help cover costs. The graveyard of Colorado festivals is deep, with the Arise, Seven Peaks, Vertex, Snowball, Velorama, Grandoozy, Mile High Music festivals shutting down in recent years.
“I think the Outside Festival will always be among the most affordable festivals you can go to,” Dorn said.
It’s also one of the few festivals that have active support from state and city officials.
Hall said support for the festival needs to come from more than the outdoor recreation office and the Outside media company. With the success of the first year, he expects it should be easier to fold in industry partners and get increased state and regional support.
“We have some good ideas about where this could go and what other buckets we could tap to continue to grow this,” he said.
For sure the event will remain in early June, Dorn said.
That is a bummer for Dave Dressman, the organizer of the GoPro Mountain Games in Vail, where the nonprofit Vail Valley Foundation has grown the early June weekend event into an outdoor industry festival that drew 92,000 visitors last year.
For more than 20 years, the GoPro Mountain Games — with pro and amateur bike, running and paddling competitions, nightly concerts and panel and athlete discussions — forged a model for a consumer-friendly outdoor recreation festival. For many years, Outside was heavily involved in promoting the GoPro Mountain Games.
“I understand what they are doing. What I struggled with is the timing, six days before our event,” Dressman said. “I think we set the table a little bit for them and I was hoping they would move the date. Maybe in late August, where we could really partner with them and help support the Outside Festival. I think there is an opportunity with the GoPro Mountain Games to collaborate in a bigger way.”