The Sundance Film Festival is reclaiming its title as Utah’s most popular arts happening, with a new economic study that estimates nearly 125,000 people attended this January’s event.
The number of attendees — 124,985 — is more than the estimated 100,000 that attend the FanX Salt Lake Comic Convention every year. FanX, formerly called Salt Lake Comic-Con, had surpassed Sundance as the state’s most-attended cultural event when the convention debuted in 2013.
The 2018 film festival generated a total economic impact of $191.6 million, according to the study released Tuesday by Sundance Institute and written by the Salt Lake City research firm Y2 Analytics.