A new year rite, Minnesota Sportsmen's Show in St. Paul calls it quits after 53 years

The Minnesota Sportsmen's Show in St. Paul has ended its 53-year run after hitting a rough patch that started in 2021 with COVID-19.

Barry Cenaiko, whose late father, Nick, founded the fishing, camping, vacation and outdoors recreation expo, said this week in an interview that he pulled the plug on the RiverCentre gathering to concentrate on similar shows that his family runs in St. Cloud, Fargo and Sioux Falls, S.D. Filling the scheduling gap at RiverCentre Jan. 12-15 will be a new RV camping and travel show.

"When I let [RiverCentre] know we are retiring the show … they were very gracious,'' Cenaiko said.

He quietly decided the fate of the once-ballyhooed event last year. Public health mandates canceled the show in 2021. In 2022, health concerns lingered and interest from vendors had softened. Minnesota resorts were slammed with business and Canadian resorts were shut down. In addition, a lot of equipment manufacturers were too low on inventory to invite more sales. Cenaiko put the show on ice.

Later, when he went to pick up the pieces for a show in 2023, some resorters were still reluctant to join. Some dock makers and other support companies also showed reluctance, Cenaiko said.

RV vendors were gung-ho for the show in 2023, but Cenaiko said he didn't think it would be fair to ticket buyers to put on "half a show.'' Moreover, Cenaiko sensed that attendance would be stymied by perceptions of urban crime and St. Paul parking issues.

"People in the suburbs are reluctant to go downtown,'' he said.

He said downtown crime is a bigger issue in Minneapolis than in St. Paul, but he's seen sport shows hurt in markets like Milwaukee, Chicago and Cincinnati where there is fear of crime.

"It's a big-city problem, not a Minneapolis or St. Paul problem,'' Cenaiko said.

But Darren Envall of Midwest Boat & Sport Shows at the National Marine Manufacturers Association, said he hasn't seen any negative fallout related to wariness of crime in downtown Minneapolis. He directs the Minneapolis Boat Show (Jan. 19-22) and the Northwest Sportshow (March 9-12), both at the Minneapolis Convention Center.

"We're not seeing the challenges of people not going downtown,'' Envall said.

The upcoming Minneapolis Boat Show, for instance, will be full of exhibitors in all four exhibit halls. "It's the 50th anniversary and interest is high,'' he said. "We're sitting really strong for the boat show … we might be all the way back now.''

Envall was referring to COVID-19 disruptions that included show cancellations in 2020 and 2021. Even during the first four months of last year, when mask mandates were in place for the Omicron variant, attendance suffered.

For the Northwest Sportshow in March, now in its 89th year, Envall acknowledged that it's been a challenge to regain all-out participation from resort owners. But with the Canadian border reopened, certain Minnesota and Canadian resorts are returning, he said. Equipment suppliers, including fishing boat dealers and all the major fishing gear manufacturers, are fully back, Envall said.

Kevin Kurtt, a spokesman for Meet Minneapolis, a convention and visitors bureau, said public safety is a leading concern among convention groups considering a gathering in the city, but there have been "very, very few'' events canceled by promoters over safety concerns.

Minneapolis Convention Center bookings, Kurtt added, have rebounded where major events in 2023 will nearly be on par with the level reached in 2019.

Joe Henry, executive director of Lake of the Woods Tourism, said he was ready to return to the Minnesota Sportsmen's Show in St. Paul this year to promote fishing vacations.

"It was kind of a surprise when I was notified,'' he said. Last month at the St. Paul Ice Fishing and Winter Sports Show, also at RiverCentre, the show was full and attendance was strong, he said.

"Some people will say, 'Ah, sports shows have died,''' Henry said. "I don't think so. We still get good value out of them.''

Cenaiko said his family sees a future of growth in its other sports show locations. He's also training his son, Conner,to head up the family's convention show decorating company.

Retiring the Minnesota Sportsmen's Show is bittersweet, he said. For the rest of his life, he'll tell stories about the glory years of the show throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s.

Those gatherings included beer gardens and big stage shows where 6,000 people at a time would sit and watch the likes of the Flying Wallendas, Donny & Marie Osmond, and the Williams and Ree comedy and music duo.

Those classic Sportsmen's shows would last six days and draw 60,000 people. Since then, the shows condensed into four-day affairs drawing in the neighborhood of 23,000 attendees.

"We made a decision that made sense for our family,'' Cenaiko said. "We wish everybody well.''