Will the State Fair of Texas be canceled? Those who will make the decision ponder the unthinkable

With each passing day, the question mounts in intensity: Is the 2020 State Fair of Texas in danger of being canceled? Amid the ongoing crush of the coronavirus, it’s hard to imagine a crowd of 92,000 filling the Cotton Bowl for the Texas-OU football game or as many as 2 million people passing through the gates. This past week, the commissioner of the Big 12 Conference described the fair as “a petri dish for infection.”

Despite opening day being more than four months away, cancellation is lurking as an ever-increasing threat.

For Dallas, a city already reeling from the devastating effects of a 2019 tornado, the loss of the State Fair would be both emotional and economic.

Based on a 2017 study conducted by the University of North Texas, the fair delivers an annual economic impact of $410 million to $499 million, making it one of the premier events in the nation. By comparison, the Super Bowl has in recent years delivered to its host city an economic benefit of about $400 million.

“The reality,” said Mitchell Glieber, president of the State Fair of Texas, which began in 1886, when Grover Cleveland was president, “is that it’s tough right now to make a call as to where we’re going to be, because there are so many uncertainties as to where this thing is going.”

From the smell of corny dogs to the looming presence of Big Tex to the roar of all those people crammed together on narrow metal benches at the Texas-Oklahoma football game, it’s almost impossible to imagine the fair not taking place.

Even the prospect of cancellation, which hovers over Fair Park like an ominous cloud, has become an emotionally charged issue, and one of the most vexing that Dallas is wrestling with in the gloom of the coronavirus. Wiping the fair from the 2020 calendar would constitute a major downer.

And yet, it has been canceled before.

It’s happened eight times over its 134 years — in 1918, near the end of World War I, when the fair was used as a military encampment; from 1935 through 1937, when the fair underwent a sabbatical to make way for the Texas Centennial Exposition and the Pan American Exposition; and from 1942 through 1945, during World War II, when the fairgrounds morphed into a housing unit for American armed forces.

Even the hint of canceling the 2020 fair is an emotional tinderbox, albeit one that demands being tempered with common sense in the wake of a global pandemic. Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson is among those who feel the tug of both extremes.

“The State Fair takes place in September and October,” Johnson said. “And it brings thousands of people together that come from, frankly, all over the country and possibly all over the world. So, you’re already bringing a bunch of people together that come from different places that are at different stages of the pandemic.

“That’s a challenge right there, and September and October are not as far away as it might sound. So, it’s not clear exactly where we’ll be. I can’t say for certain that we will not have the State Fair. I for one would love for us to be able to have the State Fair. Because I love it. I grew up in Dallas. I grew up with the fair. I represented the area where the fair is located for nearly a decade in the state Legislature. I love the actual event. My family attends the fair every year. We go multiple times. I would love nothing more than to have the State Fair, but ultimately, it will have to be a public health decision.”

So far, the virus has infected more than 3,000 people in Dallas County alone, while claiming the lives of more than 90 residents. Statewide, more than 28,000 cases of the coronavirus have been reported, with more than 700 deaths. The number of U.S. cases has surpassed 1 million.

What would cancellation mean?

Last year alone, the fair drew 2,514,637 during its nearly monthlong run, and it’s not uncommon on peak days for the fair to draw more than 200,000 people. By necessity, people would be huddled close together, eating everything from Belgian waffles to fried cinnamon buns to cotton candy tacos mixed with soda and beer.

The issue of depriving fairgoers of the fair, even for their own good, comes down to a grim case of “follow the money.”

Losing the fair would rival Austin’s glaring civic casualty, when the coronavirus forced the 2020 cancellation of internationally popular South by Southwest. In 2019, a report commissioned by SXSW assessed its annual economic impact as $356 million.

Comic-Con, San Diego’s bellwether event in economic impact, annually notches figures of almost $500 million. Comic-Con has also ditched its 2020 edition.

Should the fair follow on the heels of those cities’ mega-events, it would, the mayor said, pose “yet another challenge in an already challenging situation.” The Insurance Council of Texas estimated about $2 billion in insured losses as a result of the nine tornadoes that swept across North Texas in 2019. That event alone, Johnson said, has already hampered the city “with an issue of lost revenue — lost sales tax revenue, hotel occupancy tax revenue, etc.”

A canceled fair would only deepen the financial gloom.

Who would cancel the fair?

Fair president Glieber said it would fall to the State Fair board and its 19 voting members. They would act in consultation with “our senior management team. Really, it’s an organization decision. We would come together and make the best decision we possibly can, based on what we know," Glieber said.

Even now, the board is considering a menu of possible scenarios, none of which he wished to discuss in detail.

“We will be taking input from the city, the county, the state, if necessary,” Glieber said, “but we have not had those specific discussions because there’s so much that’s unknown at this point. We don’t know what’s going to happen in the next week, much less the next 30, 60, 90 days.”

So, for now, he said with a sigh, “We are completely in wait-and-see mode.”

What’s the deadline for making a decision?

The most critical date looming on the calendar, and it falls within the next 90 days, is Aug. 1, when the State Fair of Texas begins its annual build-out in preparation for opening day. But well before that, Glieber said, “a ton of preparation is already taking place.” As in, now.

What role does insurance play?

If indeed cancellation is the decision, there is also the matter of insurance and whether or not it would cover the coronavirus.

Officials for South by Southwest were forced to acknowledge ruefully that, while their event was insured, their policy omitted a global pandemic. And yet, the insurance policy of the annual Grand Slam tennis tournament in Wimbledon, England, did carry such protection. Soon after the its tournament was canceled, Wimbledon received a check for $141 million.

Glieber said the State Fair of Texas is insured, but like South by Southwest, its policy does not cover a pandemic. The fair has about $13 million in what he called a “reserve fund,” as per its contract with the city of Dallas.

What role will football play in making the decision?

At the moment, planning for the fair is an exercise of hope over reality. Glieber and others are paying close attention to the fate of the fair’s centerpiece, the Texas-OU game, which places more than 90,000 fans in the stands at the Cotton Bowl each October. As it goes, so too may go the fair.

But in early May, the entire NCAA football season is a complete unknown.

The fair is scheduled to begin on Sept. 25 and run through Oct. 18. The Texas-OU game, which last year drew a sold-out crowd of 92,100 at the Cotton Bowl, is scheduled for Oct. 10.

Not a single sports league, whether it be the NCAA that governs college football, or the National Football League, or Major League Baseball, or the National Basketball Association or the National Hockey League, whose seasons were interrupted, have announced publicly how, where or when they could stage athletic events.

Officials for the NCAA and the two universities — all of whom were interviewed for this article — were unanimous in repeating what everyone is saying about the fate of the fair:

“We don’t know.”

Joe Castiglione, vice president and director of athletics at the University of Oklahoma, also used one other phrase uttered by everyone we interviewed: “We’re not going to speculate.”

“We're not going to speculate right now about whether the game will be played as scheduled,” Castiglione said. “We certainly hope it will be. It's an early October tradition and one of the greatest annual spectacles in any sport. It's hard to imagine our two programs not meeting at Fair Park like we've done for the last 90 years. But the health, safety and well-being of the people we serve, which most certainly includes the fans, is of the highest importance and should guide decisions about what seasons will look like for all of our sports.”

Chris Del Conte, vice president and director of athletics at the University of Texas, said in a statement:

“With the COVID-19 health crisis, there are many ongoing discussions about the future. It’s far too early to speculate on things months away, but the Red River Showdown has been played in Dallas for generations and is a game we all look forward to. There’s nothing quite like it with both schools being equal distances from the Cotton Bowl, the crowd split straight down the middle and all of the pomp and circumstance around the game with it being in the middle of the State Fair of Texas. It’s just an awesome rivalry, is circled on everyone’s calendar every year and just a premier event for college football.”

The Texas Tribune reported Thursday that “the most visible public universities in Texas are moving toward reopening their campuses in the fall — and two say they plan to play football when they do,” referring to Texas A&M and Texas Tech. James B. Milliken, the chancellor for the University of Texas System, did not make a declaration regarding football.

Which, of course, stops short of assuring a Cotton Bowl kickoff between UT and OU come October.

To cloud the situation even further, Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said during a radio interview Thursday that college football will be "very, very lucky” not to have an interrupted season. As for the Red River Showdown, Bowlsby said, “When you think about a petri dish for spreading infection, can you think of one that’s better than the State Fair of Texas?”

While that may not have been his intention, Bowlsby’s comment does not bode well for the 2020 fair not being canceled.

And for the first time since World War II, it might well happen.