Last week millions of dollars changed hands at the Art Basel Miami Beach art fair. By Saturday afternoon, four days into the fair, dealers were worn out from all the frenzied action on the floor. Will Ameringer, of 57th Street gallery Ameringer & Yohe, had traded his J.P. Tods for white Nikes. Withered Band-Aids poked out from pumps all over the bustling convention hall floor. The five-day selling stretch, from Wednesday to Sunday, saw banner sales for many of the 190 international dealers attending. But much of the action took place away from the main drag.

The approximately 30,000 visitors who attended the fair were treated to an art-world extravaganza. There were glamorous private dinners: PaceWildenstein’s Marc Glimcher feted and fed a table full of blue-chip buyers, including photographer Bruce Weber, at the Raleigh Hotel. There were X-rated events: A book party for photographer Terry Richardson reportedly turned cabanas at the Delano Hotel into a veritable swingers’ playground. And there were raging rock concerts: The Scissor Sisters ripped it up on a special stage constructed on the beach while blackclad revelers danced in the sand.

Such revels are a far cry from the art shows we’re used to hosting here in New York. The Art Dealers Association of America’s Art Show and the Armory Show – its younger cohort in terms of both age and clientele – take place in the early months of the year. They fill the gap between the two big auction seasons.

But now Miami Basel has swooped in, getting the jump on the New York shows and capitalizing on a high-flying market that had just come off a month of stellar auctions. With exceptional Swiss efficiency, Art Basel Miami has become the premier U.S art fair for contemporary art, knocking out the formerly prestigious Art Chicago in a quick and bloodless coup. In the three short years since its inception, the fair has become not only a serious boon to dealers’ bottom lines, but a rollicking good time.

This year, it even gave rise to several satellite fairs that were – if possible – even more hip than the mother ship. A fair organized by the New Art Dealers Alliance, held at a Miami film studio where P. Diddy has filmed his rap videos, was jammed with many of the same collectors, curators, and curiosity seekers who came for the main fair. NADA booths were overrun with red dots, indicating purchased works. Chelsea transplants – Bellweather, Zach Feuer, John Connolly Presents, Daniel Reich and Clementine – were also turning red. By Friday afternoon, the only product available in any quantity was a $3 hot dog.

Given this aggressive new breed of fair organizers, a gathering of dealers like the Art Show seems almost quaint: An art fair that is only about selling art?

“This is the most fun fair,” said dealer John Cheim of Chelsea’s Cheim and Reid, standing beside a large neon sign reading “DRUGS” by artist Jack Pierson, on offer for $85,000. Another dealer at the fair, who shows both at the Art Show in New York and Miami Basel said the ADAA fair “was finished.”

With the bar suddenly raised so high, it remains to be see how other fairs – in New York and elsewhere – will compete. Both Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach are truly international festivals, drawing buyers and dealers from all corners of the globe. The Art Show, by contrast, draws a more limited clientele. It is known to attract collectors from across the U.S. but mostly they come from the tri-state area. Now in its 17th year, it is also restricted to United States dealers who are members of the ADAA. Ultimately, with just 70 dealers, the Art Show is more than 60% smaller than Miami Basel.

The president of the ADAA and Pace Prints, Dick Solomon, said that this limited purview is precisely the reason Art Basel isn’t a direct threat. “It’s a connoisseur’s boutique,” said Mr. Solomon, who reflected on the state of art fairs from a cushioned bench in the VIP collector’s lounge last Friday afternoon. “It’s quality versus quantity.”

But the fair does depend on many of the same dealers who headlined last week on Miami Beach. All 10 of the “top New York City galleries” listed on the Art Show’s 2005 fair press release who handle contemporary art were also exhibitors at Miami Basel (Acquavella, C & M Arts, Cheim & Reid, Paul Kasmin Gallery, Galerie Lelong, Luhring Augustine, Mitchell-Innes & Nash, PaceWildenstein, Sperone Westwater, and David Zwirner). And Mr. Solomon acknowledges Art Basel has very quickly made Miami the place to be.

“This fair has got buzz and got product,” said Mr. Solomon. “Unlike every other art fair, Miami Basel has turned the event into an international convention for collectors and dealers. Anybody who has any interest is here.”

In the short term, the Art Show may fall victim to – and Miami Basel benefit from – the winds of fashion. The Art Show concentrates much more on Modern art than Miami Basel, where contemporary art accounts for much of the volume. At the fall auctions, the Impressionists and Moderns lost a little steam compared to Postwar and contemporary works.

The Art Show organizers are well aware that a shift is taking place, according to Mr. Solomon, and that room needs to be made at the Park Avenue fair for younger dealers with younger material. Expect the fair to include more contemporary art, he said. “We’re at a generational shift,” Mr. Solomon said. “To a large extent collecting has changed to a new generation with collecting as an important arena to participate in. It’s a recreational activity that provides status and ultimately value.”

A future shakeout in the art market could redound to the benefit of the more modest, more Modern Art Show. But the Armory Show, which concentrates on the same contemporary art and international clientele as the Art Basel shows, probably has the most to lose. After all, there are a limited number of fairs that dealers and collectors can afford to attend.

“The International Fair of New Art,” as it bills itself, is only slightly older than Art Basel Miami Beach, and has lost a bit of its luster with the passing of two of the fair’s most beloved founders, dealers Colin de Land and Pat Hearn. This March, it will include 162 galleries (fewer than the 190 at Miami’s Art Basel). Fair organizers said they admitted 19 fewer New York galleries (there will still be 54 showing) in an effort to broaden the international flavor. That may also have to do, however, with the strength of the Euro and dismal state of the dollar.

Katelijine De Backer, director of the “The Armory Show,” has called her fair “one stop shopping,” but how can such a narrowly focused event (where’s the party?) compete with Art Basel, a holistically integrated affair where shopping is just the beginning? In any case, fair organizers weren’t taking any chances: Save-the-date cards promoting the New York fair were handed out outside the convention hall and at other events around Miami.

While the art market roars on, as it certainly did last week in Miami, air operators will continue to flourish. A bit of the mystery surrounding the Art Basel Miami Beach franchise was lifted on Saturday when the Miami Herald ran a story disclosing some of the economics of the fair.

The paper obtained budget documents from the Miami Beach Visitor and Convention Center Authority through a public documents request. These showed the fair had not turned a profit in the first two years of the event but was poised to move into the black with this third version. The event, which costs some $8.3 million to produce (Art Basel is owned by MCH Swiss Exhibition), is slated to pull in $8.5 million in revenues.

Not surprisingly most of the revenue comes from booth rental fees ($407 per square meter) and corporate sponsorship. The fair had only secured one main sponsor at the $500,000 level (the Herald reported that it had aimed for 5 sponsors at this level), the Swiss bank UBS. But it appears Art Basel Miami Beach is on track to be profitable for both the dealers showing at the fair and the fair organizers.