The thunderstorm on Jun. 19 brought with it the end of the 2016 Summer Sizzler and with the exception of the final day City of Humboldt Events and Conference Manager Mike Ulriksen could not be happier with how the weather cooperated.
“The weather obviously cooperated, the first time in about three or four years that the weather has actually worked out in our favour. That’s obviously apart from yesterday but overall that was great.”
This year’s Sizzler brought a number of new events including the comic con, the strongman competition, the wrestling event, and the monster truck rides and Ulriksen was really pleased with the end result.
“Those all went over extremely well. They all want to come back next year if we can fit them in.”
Ulriksen says attendance numbers were through the roof this year, including the midway with huge numbers.
“Last year we only had 250 in and just barely sold those out. This year we had 500 and had to start turning people away so the midway was definitely a lot more popular this year.”
Despite the low numbers at the midway on the final day of the Sizzler due to the poor weather, Ulriksen says the revenue generated for the midway was up 10 per cent over last year.
High Impact Wrestling
High Impact Wrestling came to Humboldt Friday evening for the first time ever.
Everything went very well considering it was the first time, says Ulriksen who noted they sold 220 tickets, nearly reaching their stretch goal of 300 sales and blowing past their goal of 150-175.
High Impact hosted a number of matches involving some of their top stars, including one who just recently wrestled against a former WWE superstar.
There was also a title match at the event as El Asesino put his Wildside Provincial Championship on the line against Brett Morgan. The match ended in a disqualification after a fellow wrestler interfered in the match. It was eventually restarted as a tag team contest to close the show.
Ulriksen was pleased with how the event turned out.
“The atmosphere in Jubilee Hall was unreal…(High Impact Wrestling) did a great job in getting the crowd into it and everyone seemed to have a blast so I don’t think it’s going to be too hard to sell it for next year.”
Parade
Saturday morning saw the parade roll through the streets of Humboldt with this years theme of superheroes.
The parade saw an influx in entries over last year, says Ulriksen who noted they improved to 55 entries this year.
They also brought a number of ideas into this years parade including awarding prizes to the best non-profit float, which went to Futuristic Industries, the best business float, which went to KMK Sales, the best use of theme, which went to Century 21 Dimaond Realty and the announcer’s choice award, which went to Sobeys.
This year’s parade also saw Bolt FM broadcasting live from Civic Park.
“We definitely upped the anti a little bit with the parade a little bit this year and we’ve got some ideas on how to keep growing it and making it a little more fun and a little more interactive as well,” says Ulriksen.
Comic Con
Speaking of superheroes, for the first time during the Summer Sizzler Comic Con took centre stage in the Elgar Peterson Arena.
After spending the last two years as one of the city’s summer fun camp during the summer weeks, organizers moved the event to the weekend during the Sizzler to great success.
This year’s comic con saw roughly 35 vendors take part with approximately 850 people coming onto the arena floor to walk around and check out the exhibits.
Ulriksen credits Jeff Burton for his hard work orchestrating the comic con event and growing it from the summer fun camp event to a huge attraction at Sizzler this year and says he could not be happier with how it went.
“(Comic Con) definitely far exceeded anyone’s expectation so we were extremely happy with how that went over.”
Ulriksen would like to thank all of the organizations who were involved in helping to get the Sizzler off the ground this year including the JCI’s, the vintage club, the trails committee, Arts Humboldt, just to name a few.
“Without them the event doesn’t go at all because we can’t do everything ourselves. We rely on them for a lot of that kind of stuff so they did an amazing job.”
Ulriksen would also like to thank all of the sponsors for their sponsorship in this years Sizzler for helping to bring all of this years attractions to town.
“We actually doubled our sponsorship this year and all that came from new local sponsors right here in Humboldt so that was fantastic… and we hope we can retain those and grow our sponsorship base even further next year so we can continue to grow our event beyond Humboldt.”
See more photos from the 2016 Summer Sizzler in our Gallery section.
