One Last Scotfest

For 46 years, Scotfest has brought Scottish culture to Oklahoma.

It has brought together families, musicians, athletes, clans, dancers, vendors, reenactors, volunteers, whisky lovers, first-time visitors and generations of people who simply wanted to spend a weekend celebrating something a little different.

This year will be the last Scotfest. And understandably, people are disappointed. We are too.

But as the announcement has spread, we have also seen variations of the same question: Why does it have to end?

The answer isn't one dramatic event. There wasn't one bad decision, one bad year or one person who suddenly decided they didn't want to do it anymore. The truth is much less exciting — and much harder to fix.

Events like Scotfest have become extraordinarily difficult and extraordinarily expensive to produce. And eventually, passion alone stops being enough.

Scotfest Is Not a Business Making Someone Rich

This is probably the most important thing for people to understand. Scotfest is 100% volunteer run. There isn't an owner pocketing the profits. There isn't an executive team collecting large salaries. There isn't some mysterious corporate organization sitting behind the festival.

The people organizing Scotfest have jobs, families, businesses, bills and responsibilities just like everyone attending it. They volunteer their time because they believe the event matters. For decades, an enormous amount of work has been performed without compensation simply because people wanted Oklahoma to have a Scottish festival it could be proud of. And producing a festival of this size is not a weekend job.

The public sees three days. The organizers live with it for most of the year.

The Cost of Festivals Has Changed Dramatically

The economics of producing a major community festival today bear little resemblance to what they were even a decade ago. COVID accelerated changes that were already happening. Since then, virtually every major expense associated with putting on an event has increased.

Equipment costs more. Transportation costs more. Hotels cost more. Portable toilets cost more. Generators, fencing, tents, staging and infrastructure cost more. Entertainment costs more. Travel costs more. Labor costs more. Security costs more. Insurance costs more. And liability exposure continues to grow.

A festival also doesn't have the luxury of simply eliminating many of those expenses when money gets tight. You cannot decide that insurance is optional. You cannot decide that security is optional. You cannot ignore fire codes, health regulations, alcohol regulations, accessibility requirements or public safety.

When thousands of people walk through the gates, the organization operating that event assumes an enormous responsibility. One serious incident can financially destroy a nonprofit organization. So before the first band plays, before the first caber is thrown and before the first beer is poured, tens of thousands of dollars have already been committed. Often much more.

And Then Our Equipment Was Stolen

As if the normal financial pressure wasn't enough, Scotfest was dealt another significant blow when equipment accumulated over years of producing the festival was stolen. For a volunteer nonprofit, those aren't simply replaceable assets sitting on a corporate depreciation schedule. They are extension cords. Hoses. Electrical equipment. Tools. Infrastructure. Supplies. The hundreds of mundane things the public never notices but without which a festival simply cannot operate.

Replacing equipment that took years to accumulate means diverting money away from entertainment, infrastructure, marketing and virtually everything else. It also means volunteers having to solve yet another problem during a year when resources were already stretched incredibly thin.

The Most Difficult Problem Is Cash Flow

There is another reality about festivals that audiences rarely see. Most of the money has to be spent before the festival happens. Deposits are due. Flights have to be booked. Equipment has to be reserved. Insurance has to be purchased. Marketing has to happen. Infrastructure has to be secured. The festival cannot wait until Saturday afternoon to see how many people turn up before deciding whether it can afford to exist. That is why advance ticket sales matter so much.

And this is where we need to say something that may be uncomfortable. Oklahoma has become an increasingly difficult market in which to operate a weather-dependent outdoor festival because so many people wait until the last possible minute to buy tickets. People watch the forecast. They wait to see whether it will be 82 degrees instead of 92. They wait to see whether there might be rain. They decide Saturday morning whether they feel like going.

From the customer's perspective, that makes perfect sense. From the festival's perspective, it is brutal. Imagine trying to operate a business where you have to commit hundreds of thousands of dollars but don't know whether your customers intend to show up until the day you open. That isn't a sustainable financial model.

Supporting a Community Event Means More Than Being Sad When It Disappears

Since announcing the end of Scotfest, we've seen tremendous sadness and affection for the festival. We genuinely appreciate it. There are people for whom Scotfest has become a family tradition. People have met spouses here. Children who once attended with their parents now bring children of their own. That means something to us.

But there is also a difficult conversation communities everywhere need to have about local events. Community events cannot survive on nostalgia. They survive because communities participate in them. They buy tickets. They buy them early. Businesses sponsor them. People volunteer. Organizations partner with them. People share their posts. They invite friends. They show up even when the weather isn't absolutely perfect.

It is frustrating to watch people loudly mourn the disappearance of community events they wouldn't commit $20 or $30 to supporting until they saw Saturday morning's weather forecast. It is equally frustrating to hear, "Someone needs to save Scotfest." Someone has been saving it. For decades. Volunteers have donated thousands upon thousands of hours doing exactly that.

Volunteers Eventually Run Out of Hours

Money is only part of the equation. There is also the human cost. Most attendees experience Scotfest for a few hours. For the handful of people behind the scenes, the festival can consume hundreds of hours. Emails at night. Phone calls during work. Meetings. Budgets. Vendor problems. Sponsor problems. Equipment problems. Website problems. Permitting problems. Entertainment problems. Last-minute cancellations. Weather forecasts. Insurance requirements. Emergency planning.

And inevitably, at 10:30 on a Saturday night, somebody needs something that nobody knew existed six months earlier. That is event management.

And when an organization has paid staff, those responsibilities can be distributed across an organization. When an event is almost entirely volunteer driven, they eventually concentrate among a very small number of people. Those people can carry the load for a remarkable amount of time. But they cannot carry it forever.

We Could Make Scotfest Easier. It Just Wouldn't Be Scotfest.

Of course, there are ways to dramatically reduce the cost. Book fewer bands. Eliminate attractions. Reduce athletics. Cut cultural programming. Use less infrastructure. Reduce the number of stages. Shrink the site. Do less. Eventually, however, you haven't saved Scotfest. You've simply kept the name and dismantled the thing people loved.

For 46 years, Scotfest has tried to be more than a beer tent with somebody playing bagpipes nearby. We wanted people to walk through the gates and discover Scottish music, Highland athletics, dance, history, clans, food, whisky, culture and an atmosphere they weren't going to find anywhere else in Oklahoma. That ambition comes with a cost. Financially and personally.

So Why Are We Ending?

Because at some point responsible leadership means acknowledging reality.

• The financial model has become increasingly difficult.
• The cost of producing the event has risen dramatically.
• Insurance and liability continue to increase.
• Equipment has been lost and stolen.
• Volunteer resources are exhausted.
• Sponsorship and institutional support have not kept pace with costs.
• Advance ticket sales do not provide the predictable cash flow required to responsibly commit to an event of this scale.
• And there simply isn't another group of people standing behind the current team with the time, experience and resources required to take it over.

Could we announce another year and hope everything works out? Probably. But hope isn't a financial strategy. And after 46 years, Scotfest deserves better than being allowed to slowly deteriorate until it collapses. We would rather finish properly.

One Last Scotfest

So this final festival isn't intended to be a funeral. Quite the opposite. It is a celebration.

A celebration of the musicians who have played our stages. The athletes who have thrown stones, weights, hammers and telephone-pole-sized cabers across our fields. The clans who have kept history alive. The vendors who traveled across the country to be here. The sponsors and partners who believed in us. The volunteers who worked in the heat, rain, mud and darkness. And most importantly, the people who actually supported Scotfest.

The people who bought the tickets. The people who came back year after year. The people who brought their children. The people who volunteered. The people who sponsored. The people who told their friends. You are the reason Scotfest lasted 46 years. Not one person. Not one board. Not one organizer. You.

And if you've spent years saying, "We should go to Scotfest sometime," there isn't a sometime anymore. This is it.

Because one of the greatest lessons from 46 years of producing this event is remarkably simple: the things that make a community special don't exist automatically. Someone builds them. Someone pays for them. Someone volunteers for them. Someone takes the risk. Someone gives up evenings, weekends and vacations to make them happen. And ultimately, a community decides whether they are worth preserving.

For 46 years, enough people decided Scotfest was. For that, we will always be grateful.