Firefly Music Festival planning for crowd of 90,000

The organizers of Delaware's Firefly Music Festival, spanning June 18-21, expect "up to 90,000" attendees at this year's event, Firefly director Greg Bostrom said Wednesday.

Red Frog Events, which has put on Firefly since its inaugural event in 2012, also expects 30,000 to 35,000 people at this year's inaugural Big Barrel Music Festival, a country concert cluster it's staging June 26-28, the weekend immediately following Firefly. Both festivals will be held on the grounds of Dover International Speedway.

This year's Firefly headliners are Paul McCartney, Kings of Leon and The Killers – who also headlined in 2012– in a lineup of 119 announced bands.

Blake Shelton, Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood are the lead Big Barrel acts among 40 total performers.

Red Frog organizers and Delaware Department of Transportation officials described the planning they've done over the past 11 months for the twin events at a news conference in Dover Wednesday morning. Taken together, the festivals' projected attendance is more than 10 percent of the state's entire population, but DelDOT officials say they've had plenty of practice managing large events that spread out over multiple days at the Speedway.

Gene Donaldson, a DelDOT traffic manager, said DelDOT and Red Frog people have been meeting monthly to plan for traffic flows around both events.

"We're now friends," Donaldson said. "We talk to each other. Sometimes we grumble at each other, but we get there."

Letting camping vehicles arrive as early as Wednesday, June 17 will help spread out traffic volumes, Donaldson said, and organizers are also separating entrances for campers and people driving in to the festival for the day. This year, Red Frog isn't selling single-day passes as it has in the past, but some attendees still plan to spend the nights between show days away from the site.

Bostrom said the Big Barrel country festival's attendance draw is expected to be "as big or bigger than Firefly 2012," when about 30,000 people came through the gates.

"We'll take all the incremental improvements we learned over the years with Firefly and apply it to Big Barrel," Bostrom said.

A first-time country festival under the auspices of different organizers, Delaware Junction, is planned for the Delaware State Fairgrounds Aug. 14-16.

Contact James Fisher at (302) 983-6772, on Twitter @JamesFisherTNJ or jfisher@delawareonline.com.

Firefly attendance trends

2012: 30,000

2013: 65,000

2014: 80,000

2015 (projected): up to 90,000

Source: Red Frog Events