After a record-breaking year plagued by viral videos and numerous reports of overcrowding, The Big E drew nearly 100,000 fewer visitors in 2025 — a final tally of 1,538,463 that organizers revealed only at the fair’s close after withholding daily attendance numbers amid scrutiny of crowd management.
“THAT’S A WRAP! Thank you to all 1,538,463 Fairgoers who spent the best 17 days of the year with us,” read a caption on the Facebook reel from The Big E’s page, posted after the fair concluded its run on Sunday night.
The Big E is considered one of the largest fairs in the U.S. and Canada, according to Carnival Warehouse. It opened for the season on Sept. 14 and lasted until Sept. 28.
It was named fourth largest fair in 2024 when The Big E had record-breaking attendance with a total of 1,633,935 visitors. The ranking has fluctuated over the years from third largest in 2021 to seventh largest in 2023, when there was rain, parking issues and increased prices.
In 2024, there were seven record-breaking days, including five of them in a row. On the day of an all-time single day attendance record in 2024, there were 178,608 attendees.
But it’s still unclear how many people attended the fair each day in 2025 and if any daily attendance records were broken.
Refusal to share daily attendance
This year’s final number of 1,538,463 fairgoers comes after The Big E refused to share its daily attendance rates with the public, as it’s historically done for more than 30 years. Usually, The Big E relayed this data on a devoted webpage, updated after each day of the fair’s 17-day run to reflect its attendance each day and highlight broken records.
This attendance webpage was also relied on by the West Springfield Police Department and the Mayor of West Springfield to see daily crowd levels.
On Sept. 16, West Springfield’s Chief of Operations Carly Camossi-LaPalme stated that “public safety partners and essential town departments” were being informed of the crowd numbers each morning. Camossi-LaPalme said the city did “not have any concerns regarding crowd size” following the first weekend of the fair.
Instead, she claimed there was a different “notable concern” — fairgoers with bee allergies who didn’t bring EpiPens. The West Springfield Fire Department, however, confirmed such incidents were no higher than in past years.
However, neither the mayor nor police department received daily attendance numbers this past year, MassLive learned on Sept. 24.
At first, The Big E did not provide an explanation to MassLive on why it chose to withhold the attendance information, despite multiple requests.
Then, on Sept. 25 — following several stories on the topic — a Big E spokesperson said that “more than 30 years ago, Eastern States Exposition was solicited by the Springfield newspapers to reveal attendance numbers so the paper could celebrate it and sell more copies.”
“Over time — and especially last year — the publication chose to use that number as a cudgel against Eastern States Exposition,” the statement read. The spokesperson concluded that the fair did not release daily attendance figures this year “for that reason.”
2024 viral videos
Last year, multiple viral social media videos showed gridlocked crowds across The Big E. MassLive received feedback from more than 100 attendees — many of whom said they felt unsafe due to the crowd sizes.
One person even called 911 from the fairgrounds at 5:11 p.m. on Sept. 21, 2024, fearing for their safety while trapped body-to-body on Commonwealth Avenue by a long pizza vendor line, according to the West Springfield Police Department.
In an interview with MassLive on Sept. 9, the president and CEO of The Big E, Eugene Cassidy, dismissed the videos as “clickbait” and online “trolling.” He was unaware of last year’s 911 call and said he was “very suspect” if it actually happened.
He did agree that “choke points” exist on the grounds, but continued to diminish the significance and said they occur at every fair in the country.
2025 changes
The West Springfield Mayor, William Reichelt, told MassLive that internally, organizers did care about the crowd sizes and took steps to make the fair safer in 2025.
This included switching the Macho Taco stand this year from the busy Commonwealth Avenue to a spot on East Road, hardened gate access points with vehicle barriers and boosted security in key areas.
Tonio Viscusi, owner of Angela’s Pizza was near the 2024 “pinch point” created by the Macho Taco stand. This year, he told MassLive, it was fixed without affecting his business.
“Personally, our sales, our volume is about the same,” said Viscusi.
The Vermont Marshmallow Company, Alexx Shuman, said her stand is “having our best year,” with every day being a “record day.” She noted “traffic isn’t awful when entering and leaving the fairgrounds” and it feels like the “right number of people are at the fair, instead of the most people.”
But other vendors noticed the decline in visitors.
The manager of food vendor Chompers, located on New England Avenue, said he and concession stands across the fair have seen a large decrease in sales due to this year’s lower traffic.
“Everybody that we’re talking to, all the vendors, it’s 30%, that’s about the average down,” said Val Crescentini.
“It has been very, very slow, a lot less crowds, a lot of people talking about … [how] they can’t believe how open it is, easy to walk around. Everything is more spread out and just not as busy as it was,” Crescentini said.
This year’s attendance numbers of just over 1.5 million compares more closely to attendance rates seen prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2017, the fair welcomed 1,525,553 guests. The following year, it had 1,543,470 attendees.
When the fair reopened after the pandemic in 2021, it saw 1.49 million fairgoers. This increased in 2022 to 1.6 million attendees and, despite a drop to just over 1.4 million in 2023, the fair saw record-breaking totals at over 1.63 million the year after.
The fair is expected to return to West Springfield next year and will run from Sept. 18 until Oct. 4, 2026.