DAYTONA BEACH — After a three-year run, the annual Country 500 music festival will not return to Daytona International Speedway next year, marking an unceremonious end to the first non-racing event to be showcased at the track following its $400 million "Daytona Rising" renovation.

"Daytona International Speedway will continue to explore new opportunities to host non-traditional events such as music festivals and develop a business model that can be successful for all parties involved," the Speedway announced in a statement Wednesday. "We are in the midst of negotiations right now for a new music opportunity for the future."

Speedway Spokesman Andrew Booth declined to comment beyond the Speedway's statement — and said Speedway President Chip Wile would not be putting out an additional statement. Matthew Goldman, spokesman for Festival Productions, Inc., the New Orleans-based concert production company behind the Memorial Day weekend event, directed inquiries to the Speedway. A spokeswoman for the Florida regional office of concert industry giant AEG Live, also involved in producing the festival, had no comment.

The Memorial Day music festival was a significant milestone for Daytona International Speedway and the first opportunity to demonstrate its ability to accommodate non-racing events following the track's $400 million makeover that was completed in early 2016. The Country 500, presented by the company known for its longtime success with the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, debuted in 2016 with a lineup that featured headliners such as Jason Aldean, Kid Rock, Willie Nelson and Florida Georgia Line, the latter hometown heroes featuring Brian Kelley, son of Volusia County Chairman Ed Kelley.

“We believe the Country 500 music festival will be the first of many new events added to our yearly calendar at the ‘World Center of Racing,’” Wile said in a statement in 2016.

In its Wednesday statement, the Speedway said it will continue to host "non-traditional events such as an e-sports tournament, the Magic of Lights holiday display and Challenge Daytona, an international middle-distance triathlon."

The first two years of the event, Festival Productions had released attendance figures of 75,000 each year. This year, specific attendance figures were not announced, citing Speedway policy, after a rainy weekend shortened the festival and led to cancellations of some performances. This year's lineup featured headliners Dierks Bentley, Chris Stapleton, Sugarland and Toby Keith.

“Even with a challenging weather forecast for the entire weekend, we had tens of thousands of country music fans enjoying themselves inside the infield of Daytona International Speedway,” Booth said at the time. “It’s great to see country music fans continue to embrace Country 500 for the third consecutive year."

That optimism wasn't shared in the wake of the festival's rainy third year by hoteliers near the track on International Speedway Boulevard.

Manoj Bhoola, president and chief operating officer at Elite Hospitality in Ormond Beach, which operates two oceanfront hotels in Ormond Beach and three hotels on the mainland in Daytona Beach, close to the airport and Daytona International Speedway, said in the wake of the holiday weekend that a perceived less star-studded lineup for the 2018 festival contributed to the lower occupancy rates at his company’s three mainland hotels.

“We heard from customers that the quality of the bands playing was not the same as the previous two years,” Bhoola told The News-Journal at the time. “It was a let down. They didn’t have the more popular acts as they did the previous two years.”

Deborah Bailey, general manager of the Quality Inn Daytona Speedway hotel across the street from the Speedway, offered a similar assessment. “I think the first two years, the (Country 500) lineups were a lot stronger.”

Bailey said her 64-room hotel sold out two nights during the first Country 500 festival and sold out one night last year, but didn’t sell out any nights in 2018.

For music festivals, the third year is a crucial one in determining an event's longevity, one concert industry observer told The News-Journal before this year's event.

It's at that point when a festival demonstrates its ability to maintain relationships with key corporate sponsors, a crucial factor in lasting for the long-term, said Jonathan Wynn, a sociology professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and author of a book on the festival concert business, “Music/City: American Festivals and Placemaking in Austin, Nashville, and Newport” (University of Chicago Press, 2015).

“Three years is a big deal,” Wynn said. “I would say that it’s a milestone for those festivals that seek to be destination festivals; that are looking to be a part of a city’s brand or a major player in the tourism offerings. Corporate sponsors at that point need to see returns.”

Nationally, other music festivals also have had trouble enduring, according to concert industry trade magazine Pollstar.

This year’s FYF Festival, the major Los Angeles music fest put on by Goldenvoice with a bill topped by Florence + The Machine, Janet Jackson and Future, was canceled this past summer, Pollstar reported, with a statement saying organizers “felt unable to present an experience on par with the expectations of our loyal fans and the Los Angeles music community this year.”

Also, organizers have announced that the Sasquatch! Music Festival, a fixture for 17 years at the scenic Gorge Amphitheatre in George, Wash., won't take place in 2019, Pollstar reported. And Pollstar also reported that the the new InCuya Music Festival in downtown Cleveland won't return following its debut in August.

Although it won't return, the Country 500 succeeded in bringing new visitors to Daytona Beach, said Bob Davis, president of the Lodging & Hospitality Association of Volusia County.

"It was a great event that brought a lot of people to our area, especially new and different tourists," Davis said. "Hopefully, they will come back to Daytona Beach because we'd love to have them. This is a big loss. They (country music fans) did pack up the hotels near the Speedway. That was a big score for all the hotels on ISB."

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