But after the strong response and foot traffic, which often had dozens of people waiting in lines to buy cannabis products, organizers “look forward to continuing to innovate the California Cannabis Experience next year and beyond,” Martinez told ADWEEK.
The project hit on the “educate, celebrate and experience” goals, Martinez said, noting that it checked the “immersive” box and recognized “the role of cannabis as agriculture, since it is not only the fastest-growing agricultural commodity, but also the state’s leading cash crop.”
Cannabis and capybaras
And as it turns out, the cannabis area was among the fair’s most popular attractions, alongside the new Wild Things Adventure—with its capybaras, reindeer, kangaroos and sea otters—that also brought in about 100,000 visitors, per fair data.
Final tallies are still to come, but the overall attendance at the 17-day California State Fair was up 10% this year over 2023, per organizers, with an estimated 650,000 visitors. The event, which suffered through 11 days of triple-digit temperatures, ended Sunday.
Cannabis has been embedded in the fair since 2022, with the introduction of the brand competition and the museum-quality exhibit that highlights milestones in weed history, cultivation and advocacy. Those features alone have set a precedent for how cannabis can be integrated into a marquee all-family festival.
But the addition in 2024 of on-site sales and consumption welcomes cannabis more fully to Main Street USA, a boon to California brands and the broader industry, which is expected to total $46 billion in sales in the U.S. by 2028, per BDSA.
“We think this will go a long way to destigmatizing cannabis and normalizing it in culture,” Carpenter said, “especially when everyone realizes their friends and neighbors are buying at the fair.”
California—which has struggled with price compression, illicit competition, pesticide scandals and stratospheric taxes, among other woes—leads the American cannabis market. The legacy state racked up $2 billion in legal sales in the first half of 2024, for an average of $270 million per month, according to the Green Market Report. (Michigan, with $1.6 billion, and Illinois, with $851 million, are the closest competitors.)
Not just lookie-loos
For the brands involved, the California State Fair provided an unmatched marketing platform. Embarc worked with Equity Trade Network to include social equity brands and legacy cultivators—small startup companies looking for a business boost.