I read today that in 2015 the attendance was 739,000. That's insane.
The number of attendees is a guess. Sturgis uses the weight of the trash along with other metric to estimate the "official number". But more and more people are spending less time in Sturgis and more in the surrounding towns. For example, venders consistently say they do better business at Black Hills Harley, Rally at Exit 55, than they do in Sturgis. Towns like Hill City and Custer have jumped on the bandwagon. And the town of Buffalo Chip, yep that's a venue large enough to declare themselves their own town, have visitors that stay there instead of venturing into town.
