Nearly 89,000 people attended in-person screenings at the Sundance Film Festival in late January, according to preliminary data from the Sundance Institute shared with the Park City Council Thursday.
That’s down over 25% from the nearly 117,000 festival goers reported in January 2020, a little over a month before the coronavirus shut down the world.
The Sundance Institute said they were expecting that decrease, as they intentionally reduced the capacity of this year's event. For example, the theater at the MARC, which seats 550 people and has historically been the second-largest Sundance venue, was cut this year.
2023 attendees accounted for about 138,000 movie tickets spread across theaters in Park City, Salt Lake City, and Sundance Mountain Resort.
Park City had eight film venues throughout the duration of the festival, compared to Salt Lake’s four theaters and Sundance’s sole screening room.
The 2023 festival was unique in that it was Sundance’s first ever hybrid event, with movie watching both in-person and online.
Despite going back to the full event in Park City for the first time since the pandemic began, Sundance said there were 285,000 views online of films during the 2023 festival.
Salt Lake City-based analytics firm Y2 Analytics, which partnered with Sundance on the visitation data, estimated the total economic impact of the festival to be roughly $118 million.
That’s down nearly 30% from the reported economic impact of the festival in 2020.
Tax revenue shows declines from pre-Covid levels as well. The 2023 festival yielded $12.8 million in state and local tax revenue, compared to $17.8 million in 2020.
Sundance will finalize more data about the 2023 festival in the coming months.
