Parking at the Kentucky Exposition Center for the upcoming Bourbon & Beyond and Louder Than Life music festivals isn’t cheap. At $40 a day, you’ll shell out $160 total if you’re attending either of the four-day festivals and leave your car at the venue each afternoon.
Those numbers can induce some sticker shock. They also add up for the state-owned facility, run by Kentucky Venues, which annually hosts everything from graduation ceremonies to youth sports competitions.
In 2024 alone, the Expo Center pulled in about $7 million in parking fees, according to documents obtained through an open records request.
Totals included in records added up to just over $9 million, but director of communications Ian Cox said that figure includes admission to some events, including the Kentucky State Fair, the highest-grossing single event at more than $1.4 million total.
The Expo Center and the surrounding fairgrounds, which includes 300 acres of outdoor space along with 1.2 million square feet of indoor facilities, is built for big events. Each year it hosts Louder Than Life (about 150,000 attendees over three days in 2024, after one day was cancelled due to weather) and Bourbon & Beyond (a record-breaking 210,000 over four days in 2024), along with the Kentucky State Fair, which generally draws more than half a million people over a week and a half.
Attendees of those events need places to park. The fairgrounds where the Expo Center sits includes 267 total acres of parking, according to Kentucky Venues, with 153 of those acres paved. And the millions raised each year by drivers who park at the facility will help fund several ongoing renovation projects and other improvements.
“The parking fees help offset costs so that we can remain competitive for national events and continue to welcome millions of attendees annually, many of whom come from around the world to attend,” Cox said in a statement.
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Kentucky Expo Center renovations and upgrades
Three recent projects at the Expo Center were cited by Cox as developments supported by parking revenue:
All Expo Center entrance gates are currently being redesigned, an ongoing project with a price tag of $24 million. The newly redesigned Gate 4 was opened in May, while the final update on Gate 2 should begin later this year. Those gates handle 25 lanes for vehicles entering the fairgrounds.
A $2 million effort to install 650 security cameras and a command center staffed by Kentucky State Fair Board Police was recently completed, which “includes interior and exterior monitoring that supports traffic and event operations.”
Kentucky Venues is also putting $3 million toward a paving project aimed a maintaining existing parking and expanding parking where growth is possible.
Those projects are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to work at the Expo Center, though parking fees aren’t a factor for all of it.
The facility is currently in the middle of a massive renovation effort to add new structures and redevelop current buildings, with a goal of completing the work by the end of 2026.
More: What’s going on at the Kentucky Exposition Center? What we know on the massive expansion
As seen in this rendering, the Kentucky Exposition Center in Louisville will have two new buildings when the second phase of a planned $393 million renovation is completed.
It’s expensive work. The first phase of the project, construction of a new 350,000-square-foot exhibit hall, is expected to cost about $180 million, with funding provided by the Kentucky legislature. The second phase, which will redevelop current buildings to offer new amenities and better food and beverage options, should cost about $213 million.
Expansion efforts “will mark the most significant change to our footprint since 1956, transforming it into a venue capable of hosting major events at a scale never seen before,” Kentucky Venues President and CEO David Beck previously said.
The Expo Center — and its parking — has been a focal point of Louisville’s tourism efforts for decades. City figures show 14 of the 16 events with the biggest estimated economic impacts in 2025 will be held at the fairgrounds. And while the Kentucky Derby was one of the two events not held at the facility, Churchill Downs paid $150,000 to lease its parking lot for the race in 2024.
Biggest parking events at the Kentucky Expo Center
The following list offers a quick look at the Expo Center’s five events that brought in the highest revenue from parking in 2024. Admission fees often paid alongside parking expenses at gates entering the fairgrounds are not included.
The Expo Center collected an average of more than $200,000 per day at heavy metal music festival Louder Than Life last September. The highest-grossing day was Sunday, Sept. 29, when more than $266,000 was spent by drivers to see headliners such as Judas Priest, Korn and the Eagles of Death Metal (OK, they weren’t a headliner, but that name earns them an honorable mention here).
Louder Than Life will be back this year from Sept. 18 through Sept. 21, with big names including Slayer and Avenged Sevenfold scheduled to perform.
See the lineup: Here’s who’s performing at Louder Than Life in 2025
The lighter but still hard-partying Bourbon & Beyond music festival took place over four days the week before Louder Than Life and brought in similar parking receipts. The Expo Center made just over $252,000 on Saturday, Sept. 21, with Cody Jinks and Zach Bryan atop the lineup.
Bourbon & Beyond will bring big names including Phish, Jack White and Sturgill Simpson back to Louisville this year from Sept. 11 through Sept. 14.
Ready to eat? Bourbon & Beyond releases its 2025 culinary, bourbon lineup
Kentucky Kingdom is not a single-day event. The theme park at the fairgrounds is open daily each year from early May into September and brings in hundreds of thousands of visitors each summer.
More: Kentucky Kingdom announces new rides, more updates coming next season
The Kentucky State Fair routinely draws massive crowds, and 2024 was no exception, with attendance over its 11-day run in Louisville rising past 500,000. The revenue figure included in this list does not include the more than $1 million spent on admission fees.
The Kentucky State Fair is scheduled to take place this summer between Aug. 14 through Aug. 24. Our journalists will staff a booth on the first Friday of the festivities, Aug. 15.
Graduation ceremonies: $401,988
The Expo Center is a popular spot for schools to host graduation ceremonies. In 2024, more than 20 schools in Louisville and surrounding counties chose the venue to celebrate their graduating classes. Those ceremonies pulled in more than $400,000 in parking fees.
Reporter Marina Johnson contributed. Reach Lucas Aulbach at laulbach@courier-journal.com.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Kentucky Expo Center makes millions off parking. Here’s how much