People associate the fairgrounds with the biggest HNY so if you're going to travel to Fresno, why go to some second hand location when you can just hit the main event, right? Their fault for not saving the money they earned in previous years so they could outbid other bidders for the fairgrounds. Now they'll have to wait till the next bidding war. Hopefully they will still have enough funds to outbid their competitors.
Although, if they were business oriented, they could've opened up their HNY a bit earlier, like from the 24th on. That way they'll get visitors before the other one even opened its doors. We'll see if they see my comment here and consider it for next year.