CMT News

The 2010 CMA Music Festival will be remembered as one of high attendance and high temperatures. All of the festival's nightly concerts at LP Field sold out for this first time this year. Attendance for the evening concerts was up 16.7 percent over last year, including four-day ticket packages, promotional tickets and single night tickets. Average nightly attendance topped 49,000. In addition, despite near-record temperatures, attendance at the daytime concerts at Riverfront Park was up 6.4 percent over last year. According to figures released by the CMA, estimated daily attendance for this year's festival was 65,000 people, compared to 56,000 last year. With temperatures in the mid-90s for the four-day festival that ended Sunday (June 13), the heat index reached as high as 104 and caused more than 400 people to be treated for heat exhaustion. Two deaths occurred in downtown Nashville during the festival. A 33-year-old security guard at the festival was found dead inside a closed medical tent, and a 54-year-old homeless man was found dead near Municipal Auditorium. Authorities are still trying to determine the causes of death.