Thin crowd at Canadian County air fest leaves vendors feeling scammed

Some vendors at a weekend air show at the Canadian County Expo Center say it did not live up to the hype and they want a refund.

The OK Air Fest advertised several exhibitions, including paragliding, hot air balloons and helicopter rides.

Sunday afternoon, they also had a motorcycle stunt ride.

Many of the vendors took to Facebook, sharing their disappointment at what they saw as a thin crowd over the three-day festival.

"After that first night at 7 p.m., I shut down and I had kind of given up on the event." said air fest vendor Peter Bujnowski.

"We've just been scammed out of it. We were told this is going to have so much foot traffic, and there was absolutely nothing. Some of us didn't even make 500 dollars," added another vendor, Genesis Anthony.

Bujnowski and his wife say they were expecting lots of people to come out based on the advertisement.

The spokesperson for the event Tammy Briscoe admits they did not have the turnout expected and said some flight activities were impacted by the weather.

"On Friday, we got grounded by the FAA. We couldn't get anyone up into the air because of the winds. We're in Oklahoma," said Briscoe.

Briscoe said they attempted to address any concerns with the vendors. They said, despite those weather issues grounding flights on Friday, they put on a glow show to keep people entertained.

Briscoe added that about 15 hundred free admission tickets were handed out leading up to the event to try and generate attendance.

The Canadian County Expo Authority released the following statement about vendors' concerns:

The Canadian County Expo Center would like to share the following statement regarding concerns raised by vendors who participated in last weekend’s OK Air Fest event.

We want to make clear that Canadian County Expo Center served solely as the rented venue for this event. The Expo Center’s venue rental contract was with OK Air Fest, LLC, a company in good standing with the Oklahoma Secretary of State and managed by the event’s promoter, Carrie Lawrence. OK Air Fest, LLC rented the Expo Center facilities for the event and OK Air Fest, LLC was solely responsible for all communications and contracts with vendors for their event. The Canadian County Expo Center’s only role in the event is providing the venue to the promoter. The promoter is solely responsible for promoting and managing the event, to include managing their relationships with their vendors.

The Canadian County Expo Center is aware of the concerns that have been raised regarding the promoter’s management of their event and we can assure everyone involved that we will carefully review our policies and procedures and make any necessary adjustments regarding factors that we, as the event venue, can control. As with all events that take place at our facilities, we are committed to learning from each experience and identifying ways that we can improve our operations. As a world-class facility hosting over 50 successful events annually, the Canadian County Expo Center is dedicated to its mission of creating significant economic impact for the benefit of the citizens of Canadian County.