Bayou Country Superfest announced it has no current plans to return in 2020 or beyond.
The 10-year-old country music festival said that it will be “on hiatus until further notice” in a tweet on Monday, Jan. 27. The event organizers did not elaborate on the decision. 
Attendance for the Memorial Day weekend festival peaked in 2014 with around 135,000 people, but has decreased every year since then. 
The festival relocated from its original venue, LSU’s Tiger Stadium, to New Orleans in 2017 while the stadium underwent repairs. The Mercedez-Benz Superdome hosted the event for two years. 
History junior Blake Lea Bueto said she believes the change of location contributed to the decline in attendance. 
“They moved it to Nola, which probably messed everything up,” Bueto said. “I know I personally decided not [buy tickets] because I didn’t want to go there. Then it became a dry stadium, and people typically go to drink and listen to music.”
The festival returned to Tiger Stadium in 2019, with an attendance of only 50,000 country music fans– less than half the size of its crowd in 2016.  Headliners included Kenny Chesney, Jason Aldean and Florida Georgia Line. 
Some are not surprised by the news, and placed the blame on the lineups. 
“Well, if you wouldn’t have brought in the same damn acts every damn year, maybe ticket sales wouldn’t have been so dismal,” Twitter user @NotMoscona said in response to Superfest’s hiatus announcement. 
Jason Aldean performed at Superfest five times, almost every other year since the festival’s creation. Kenny Chesney and Luke Bryan both appeared four times. Eric Church, Florida Georgia Line and Keith Urban are among others who also made several appearances. 
Biological engineering sophomore David Vercher said he believes the festival did not promote itself well enough. 
“It’s not advertised well enough,” Vercher said. “Even though I’ve been before, I don’t hear anything about it until it’s almost time for it.”
Visit Baton Rouge and the Louisiana Office of Tourism contributed $350,000 each for the festival, according to The Advocate. 
“Are we disappointed? Yes,” Visit Baton Rouge CEO Paul Arrigo told WBRZ. “Are we hoping that something like this or that comes back in the future? Absolutely.”
Arrigo is not the only one who will miss the yearly festival. Several students, including kinesiology sophomore MacKenzie O’Keefe, are saddened by the news. 
“I’m sad because I never got to go and I love country music,” O’Keefe said. “I think it’s a great way to bring people together, especially in Baton Rouge. It will be missed.”