Mexico Attendance

[The Snout]

From espn. note it says race officials.

# Race officials announced an attendance of 92,713 for the race and 215,771 for the three days of the event.

[veeten]

Another major success for Champ Cars, seeing the lack of crowds at Phoenix today. The ABC cameras spent more time trying to concentrate on the cars than trying to avoid showing the stands, and how devoid of people they were.

It'll be interesting when the broadcast portion of CART's season comes in. If these races do promote interest in the series, then Champcars can move forward with other promotional plans.

[enemy-ace]

Nice to see good attendance at Monterry. What was at Phoenix?

[Fish_Flake]

Let's see...Phoenix holds 80,000 spectators. The stands were about half-full, so I'll say the total attendance was about 35,000. Minus the 25,000 seats Honda, Toyota, and Marlboro gave away, I say about 10,000 fans attended Phoenix.

Monterrey, as expected, was near the 100,000 mark today, and most of them were actual fans as well. Did you hear the crowds when Dominguez went into Manning? They almost drowned out the engines! The ABC crews couldn't pick up crowd noise at Phoenix even if the engines were silent!

CART was wise to add the Mexican races to the schedule. They seem to be one of the few to tap the unappreciated markets of the Second Economic World. After all, Mexico is very big on "our" sports. A Major League Baseball team played a series down in Mexico City a few years back, and that was a huge success. The Cowboys play an exhibition game in Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, and the attendance is always in six figures. Should an NBA team, say, the Mavericks, play a game in Mexico, you'd see 30,000 easy. And they're all so passionate about it. It's a good thing NASCAR can't see the values of the Mexican market.

[Jay]

I just looked at the replay of Gil and Mikey's smash up in thing in phoenix and I'd have a hard time believing those stands were anywhere near half full. All of the grandstands were about as full as the most empty ones in Mexico were..maybe not even that many. I'd say 70% empty.

I think the Mexicans got to see a good show too, with plenty of action and a second place for Jourdain.

[The Snout]

I haven't seen the footage yet, but $5 says they got 15k max at Phoenix. Maybe half that paid.

[indycool]

Sounds like they had a good crowd at Monterrey, but I refuse to believe 92,000 in a place that seats 58,000 and those seats weren't full. Phoenix drew a 1.5 overnight rating, up from 1.2 last year, or 1.3 million homes. Wonder what the overnights were for Monterrey on Speed??????

[veeten]

One also has to include open and semi-open areas along the raceway, where viewers don't have to utilize grandstand seating. Sort of the same way that, in the past, Phoenix has with the hillside areas around the course. Remember, one can enter the main gate and not have to utilize main seating areas, and this is especially true on road courses.

[Snrub]

Why the heck are people watching IRL so much this year? Anyone know the Monterrey TV ratings?

[BootsOntheSide]

1.2 to 1.5 doesn't sound like a big increase considering that the IRL now has all these big drivers and teams from CART.

92000 sounds quite unlikely, and in any case there will have been a lot of 'gift' tickets given out by Ford, Bridgestone and perhaps Tecate / Herdez etc. I suspect there were around 50,000 paying spectators in Monterrey, compared to 20000 tops at Pheonix

[The Snout]

50000 + seats and I've seen on other forums from guys that have been to Mexico that there's as much general admission as there are seats. So the 90000+ sounds right to me.

[KC]

The single biggest reason why the IRL gets better TV ratings than CART? Unless you live in certain markets, SpeedTV is offered as a premium package channel only. For me, the price to get SpeedTV on top of the cable that is offered is $20 a month. From around $30 a month to just over $50 a month. For one channel worth watching. A lot of people are either unwilling or unable to spend that money. In about 40% of America, SpeedTV is available only on satellite dish.

The IRL has been in bed with ABC Sports ever since they signed a long term deal (and overpayed for that) with the Indy 500. I can get ABC on a terrestrial antenna for free. ABC Sports is also the major reason why CART lost so much in TV ratings in North America while associated with their network.

[FastCar5]

How long will Honda and Toyota put up with these empty seats? Phoenix looked terrible. How long will it be before the "one-horse-pony-show" race at Indy becomes the same? All forms of OW racing are hurting. I would not be surprised for the big boys to say screw it and run selected, well attended events regardless of ratings. This kinda of attendance makes everyone look bad!

[Snrub]

I think we'd be pretty happy if CART was at 1.2 and went up to 1.5. It's pretty hard to critize with a likely .3 (judging by St. Petes).

[Flatspot]

What was race was at Pheonix?

[The Snout]

Cart TV is **** however when we go over to CBS races we'll have a better idea of where we are. Largest figure I can find from last year on Speed was a .5 compared to say a 1.4 on CBS for Miami. So when we get through into the CBS stint we'll have a better idea, until then it's apples and oranges.

[esorniloc]

There looked some empty seats in Mexico! At least two stands looked empty.

[Jay]

yeah, there were some empty seats, but the majority of the attendance from this event is in the form of General Admission, which were tons!

[f1manoz]

The stands at Monterrey were generally full, although there was one stand out the back of the circuit that was half-empty.

I caught a few glimpses of the crowd in Phoenix and it was pathetic.

[Liz]

Doesn't it take more than 10 people to make a "crowd"?

[Tiresmoke]

Like Snout said, race officials, they are able to give very specific attendance numbers because they base it off ticket sales and gate count, which is an accurate number and accurate representation of butts in seats.