The Attendance Thread

rowdy3 said:
About 50k for vegas according to their newspaper.
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Not bad but I expect a sellout in Vegas when there are a lot of people who travel there during winter. Do they have higher than normal ticket prices?
 
RacerrecaR said:
Not bad but I expect a sellout in Vegas when there are a lot of people who travel there during winter. Do they have higher than normal ticket prices?
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It's so funny how they get 50k in Darlington or Watkins Glen and everyone raves how great that is because of how full it looks on TV, but that same number in Vegas is ho-hum, and that same number in Indy looks like a ghost town.
 
Jeff Turner said:
It's so funny how they get 50k in Darlington or Watkins Glen and everyone raves how great that is because of how full it looks on TV, but that same number in Vegas is ho-hum, and that same number in Indy looks like a ghost town.
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50k anywhere looks ho-hum to all of us who recall pretty much every race being a sellout 20 years ago
 
The "near the end of stage 1" obligatory attendance update for Cali. Looks like every other Cali crowd the last 10-15 years. By 2020 standards pretty good....
 
Just added a ticket to my order for the cup race in Atlanta and I had to get one in a different section because nothing was left near us. It's not a problem because my littlest one still sits on my lap anyway, but I was surprised to find that my section was sold out. Looking on the seat map, it looks like quite a few sections are sold out or only have singles left. Last year seemed about half full, which was better than the previous year. But I'm thinking this year we might see a mostly full grandstand in Atlanta for the first time in quite a few years. They did do the drink rails in certain sections this year so that helps I'm sure, but that was really only the upper half of the middle section, so I don't think it reduced seating all that much.
 
It's nice that forum members actually go to races.!! Hope you had a good time...! I'm Counting down the days till our annual pilgrimage to Bristol in September !!
 
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Larsonfan1995 said:
Yeah it was almost full last year and looked half full this year. I'm sure the forecast hurt short term sales.
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It was about 1/2 full last year too. The entire race is posted on youtube but you can't post the actual video from here due to copyright issues since its NASCAR's version. Anyway, follow the link and fast forward to the 48 minute mark to the 50 minute mark there's good shots of the crowd.

 
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BobbyFord said:
No.
Where were you sitting? Looked a hell of a lot different from my seats.
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From my living room. Had plenty of great shots from the good-year blimp :)

I'm still deciding if I want to do Atlanta next week. I'm really starting to wish Martinsville was still in March. I have the itch....
 
KodiakRusty89 said:
From my living room. Had plenty of great shots from the good-year blimp :)

I'm still deciding if I want to do Atlanta next week. I'm really starting to wish Martinsville was still in March. I have the itch....
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Considering the place including the sky boxes still has around a 100 thousand capacity, there were plenty of people both years.
 
Here are two screen shots from the 2019 event near the end of stage 1. I wouldn't be denied by the video hiccup :p. The seats coming out of 4 and into 1 just don't sell. I always liked sitting closer to the turns at Michigan so I'm clearly in the minority there...lol

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StandOnIt said:
Considering the place including the sky boxes still has around a 100 thousand capacity, there were plenty of people both years.
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Grandstand capacity is 68k plus 28 skyboxes. Adding the infield the facility's capacity is about 122k. If you factor in the grandstand, infield, boxes/people milling about the crowd was probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 60k, or a bit more . AKA twice as many than at a Chargers game ;). LA/SoCal sports attendance is a never ending enigma.
 
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KodiakRusty89 said:
Grandstand capacity is 68k plus 28 skyboxes. Adding the infield the facility's capacity is about 122k. If you factor in the grandstand, infield, boxes/people milling about the crowd was probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 60k, or a bit more . AKA twice as many than at a Chargers game ;). LA/SoCal sports attendance is a never ending enigma.
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Ouch, had to get in a dig at my Chargers. I'm really worried about how the crowds will look for home games at SoFi. Lol
 
Larsonfan1995 said:
Ouch, had to get in a dig at my Chargers. I'm really worried about how the crowds will look for home games at SoFi. Lol
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I was going toss in a dig at Clay Helton and USC football but the Chargers attendance woes are more widely known. The Trojans will have a hard time getting 50% capacity at the newly downsized Coliseum (90k+ to 77k) if Helton doesn't turn things around in a big way. If the Chargers sign Brady they'll obviously sell-out the first few home games. However, if he and the team were to struggle people will tune them out in a hurry.

Bottom line, the LA sports market is extremely tough. NASCAR/NFL/College football & hoops/MLB all have known that for years, even decades. The dwindling crowds at Cali Speedway were the first that really raised eyebrows close to 15-20 years ago. I still remember a famous quote regarding a deemed "small" crowd when attendance around NASCAR was still really good.. The track spokesman said something to effect of "thousands of people were under the stands getting out of the sun". Everyone knew that was complete nonsense. The comment actually made the track and its fanbase look worse because 1. everyone knew it wasn't true and 2. it was basically the ultimate SoCal fair weather fan insult.

At this point I think the track does pretty well given the area's history. Ontario failed and Riverside was deemed more profitable as a real-estate property. I know the crowds at Ontario were pretty terrible but no sure about Riverside. Watching old Riverside races the attendance seemed "good" but it's really tough gauge a road course crowd.
 
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Not trying to kill this thread with my posts but I found this interesting...

Auto Club aka Cali Speedway has been around for 23 years, 1997-present
Riverside International Raceway was in existence for 32 years, 1957-1989
Ontario Motor Speedway (listed capacity 180k :eek:) lasted a mere 10 years, 1970-1980
 
KodiakRusty89 said:
Not trying to kill this thread with my posts but I found this interesting...

Auto Club aka Cali Speedway has been around for 23 years, 1997-present
Riverside International Raceway was in existence for 32 years, 1957-1989
Ontario Motor Speedway (listed capacity 180k :eek:) lasted a mere 10 years, 1970-1980
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Ontario was a massive facility and it was also the home of the World Finals in drag racing. Comp Plus just did a drag racing article on it not to long ago.

http://www.competitionplus.com/comp...ontario-motor-speedway-death-of-a-super-track
 
StandOnIt said:
yeah I watched some old film. The cars looked like specks on the back stretch. :D
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They said you could fit 2-1/2 Disneyland's inside of it. Myself and a couple of our crew guys just ate at a buffet last month that is located where the track use to be.
 
Hearing that homestead has sold about 18k tickets so far out of the 40k plus or minus. Date change, 12 hours, spring training and the now canceled ultra music festival.
 
New Hampshire has completely removed turn 3 and 4 grandstand.
 
Nitro Dude said:
They said you could fit 2-1/2 Disneyland's inside of it. Myself and a couple of our crew guys just ate at a buffet last month that is located where the track use to be.
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Ontario was a near identical copy of Indianapolis. The problem with Ontario was the huge debt load the owners took on to build it as much as the mediocre crowds. It was a massive facility and it was built to first class standards that took some of the other venues took decades to get to. To paraphrase Indy historian Donald Davidson, " They were trying to be Indianapolis on day one, even though it took Indy 50 years to get to that point". Even with better crowds they would have been scraping by.
 
Another week or two and attendance will be a non-issue.
 
There won’t be any fans through June 21, and if Monroe County moves from red to yellow soon enough they can race at Pocono without fans. The combined IndyCar/NASCAR Independence Day weekend event looks to be the first with the potential for some sort of live crowd capacity.



 
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