JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- The Florida and Georgia fans wanted inside, and the businesses wanted them there as well, but officials at the Jacksonville Landing said some crowd confusion at the start of the weekend is proving costly.

Some people were stuck outside the Landing on Friday night because there were too many people inside.

The problem is even when people left, no one else got in.

At one of the city's biggest events, no one expected the party to be over for hundreds who were stopped at the gates just before 10 p.m.

"It was sad and unfortunate," said Rachel Nudge, the spokeswoman for the Landing.

The fire marshal was worried about crowding in the courtyard and refused to let anyone else in, causing thousands of dollars for the businesses who were looking to cash in.

"We had upset merchants who were expressing decrease in their sales anywhere between 35 and 50 percent for this event," Nudge said. "And we have a lot of people, especially those from out of town, expressing how angry and upset they were about what happened."

The owners of Chicago Pizza even raced to open their doors in time for the big game, only to have an empty restaurant for one of the biggest weekends of the year.

Case after case of alcohol still sits in front of the restaurant untouched.

"It's extremely frustrating, but we take it in stride," said Jimmy Demarco, the restaurant's owner. "We're going to hopefully be here a long time. Lessons learned."

Nudge said they had a lot of angry phone calls from people who were confused and didn't understand what was happening, which ultimately affected business on Saturday as well.

"I heard specific things like, 'My friends always tell me to go to the Landing and I made the wrong decision,'" Nudge said. "I really do feel that could've impacted our Saturday night as well. We were getting phone calls over our public phone line with questions like, 'Is the Landing closed?' That kind of damage went into the rest of the weekend for sure."