Queen City Ex attendance down 25% from 2024, as REAL changes reporting practices

WATCH: There was a significant drop in attendance at this year's Queen City Ex according to REAL. Wayne Mantyka reports.

The Regina Exhibition Association Limited (REAL) has changed the way it records attendance — leading to reduced totals for this year’s Queen City Ex (QCX).

According to REAL, the 2025 Queen City Exhibition welcomed just under 74,000 fairgoers this year – marking a decrease from last year’s scanned attendance of 102,000.

“Scanned attendance offers a reliable and verifiable measure of how many people actually attended the event — unlike broader promotional estimates,” REAL CEO Rick Bennet said in the announcement.

In reference to the “broader promotional estimates” — last year, REAL claimed that 262,720 people attended the Queen City Ex, which represents a margin of 160,720 attendees.

As for the decrease of the more than 25,000 scanned attendees from 2024 to 2025 — the organization said several factors fed into that result, such as the Saskatchewan Roughriders playing an away game, the timing of the Saskatchewan Day holiday, the pause of community activations such as the Kidway Morning, Newcomers Day, the 5K Midway Run, as well as a delayed start to ticket sales.

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QCX event manager Cat Betker says advancements in technology are allowing the organization to be far more accurate in calculating attendance.

“It was a really common industry practice to kind of use this, almost like a multiplier … the technological systems have advanced so much that now we do have a really clear insight to how many people we have on property at any one time,” she explained.

“Whereas previously, if you didn’t have [a] fancy, high tech, ticket scanning system or a way to control and manage people, you had to use these kinds of multipliers because that was your best estimate.”

REAL has made headlines in recent years and not always for the right reasons.

From the controversial Experience Regina tourism campaign to the removal of Tim Reid as president and CEO, to the organization’s financial struggles — issues at REAL have been prevalent.

• City of Regina agrees to take over tourism responsibilities from REAL
• Tim Reid removed as president and CEO of REAL
• Regina city council approves reduced REAL budget totaling $11.2M
• REAL lays off 7 members of ‘senior management’ as part of restructuring

Betker says her colleagues are excited for the future and eager to put past troubles behind them.

“We’ve been through a couple of very tumultuous couple of years, and I think we’re all ready for things to settle down a little bit and kind of just get back to business and do the things that we do so well,” she said.

“There’s been a lot of a lot of noise and a lot of media and realistically, you know, we’re just trying to be that anchor in the community that is continually focused on delivering things that support the people that need it.”

The 2026 Queen City Ex is slated to run from July 29 to Aug. 2.