The Star Counts Seats

[JoeBob]

http://www.indystar.com/articles/7/149882-2547-188.html

[Spicoli]

275.


saw that. and they say WE pad numbers. 500k my ****ing ass. :rolleyes:

[RichK]

It's very surprising to see this in the Star.

[KLang]

I'm suprised FTG allowed them to count. Thought it was supposed to be a big secret.

[cart7]

Here's the link to the breakdown by section Linkie (http://www.indystar.com/articles/4/149884-5044-184.html)

Get a load of the North Vista description.

North Vista

Tickets: $80

History: Built in 1993.

Noteworthy: No deck, 440 seats lost to entrance openings, wheelchair seating dangerously close to the fence.

Total Seats: 31,240.

Isn't this where the Renna debris wound up??

[nrc]

HAR! The ol' "you can't have that many people because you don't have that many seats" canard from CrackForum finally comes home to roost! :rofl:

I've been saying for a while now that IMS hadn't seen 400,000 butts in a long time. As it turns out, it probably hasn't seen 300,000 in a long time.

[JLMannin]

Allegedly, Goodyear hired people to count the seats back when they did crowd estimates.

[Napoleon]

275 is the number I have been using for years. It was real easy to do a rough estimate of that number simply by using the lineal feet of grandstand frontage times an estimate of how many seats each lineal feet would be estimated to contain.

[devilmaster]

Isn't this where the Renna debris wound up??

Shhh! Nobody's supposed to mention that any more. We're all just supposed to forget. The fence did its job. No debris. All Renna's fault. (yet they don't have TV footage, or cameras, or anyone watching) Driver error. Never yous mind.




:shakehead
Steve

[Insomniac]

Shhh! Nobody's supposed to mention that any more. We're all just supposed to forget. The fence did its job. No debris. All Renna's fault. (yet they don't have TV footage, or cameras, or anyone watching) Driver error. Never yous mind.




:shakehead
Steve

Did they ever mention him on TV? Any tribute to him? Moment of silence? Anyone know?

[Ziggy]

Yes, they did

Ziggy

[pineapple]

500, 400, 300, 275, 31,240...why worry. Only numbers, easily adjustable.

Tony Renna - RIP.

[Steve99]

500,000 is just a number.

[Insomniac]

Yes, they did

Ziggy

When?

[Ziggy]

Like I marked it down....... I think it was prior to the season opener at Homestead. I dont keep track of there comings and goings to well. They did a small, well produced tribute to Renna, and I saw it, and this year

Ziggy

[pchall]

HAR! The ol' "you can't have that many people because you don't have that many seats" canard from CrackForum finally comes home to roost! :rofl:

I've been saying for a while now that IMS hadn't seen 400,000 butts in a long time. As it turns out, it probably hasn't seen 300,000 in a long time.

Looking at Cavin's seat count and the quotes about infield attendence, I doubt that IMS ever saw 300K butts. 275K tops. Of course, this is assuming that the Place Fan/Indiot assertion that every seat lost to improvements since 1994 was replaced with new seating elsewhere is true. If the lemmings have been lying about that, then I'd allow 300K at the height of the CART era.

[Mike Kellner]

It's C^RT's fault. EVIL Scorched Earth C^RT/OWRS fans stole the seats. There was 500K at the start of the C^RT Era. The whine & cheeze tasting elitist C^RTisans would sneak the seats out of the track in their Gucci handbags.

mk

[Ziggy]

Well, time for a little refresher course IMO

What nobody has mentioned on a message board that I have seen yet.

The Infield. Thats right ladies and gentleman, the freakin' infield. The dynamics of the "Snake Pit" circa 1970 - 1976 can not be denied. This attraction alone put people on the grounds. I would venture to say that the Infield had the capacity to hold around 50,000. This is hard to judge, but IMS sits on a huge tract of land. You had turn one (snakepit) turn 2, (which was milder, and a good place to park and walk over to bedlam) Turn 3, which fed a stand (more in a second) and turn 4 (which became dodge city after they started cracking down in turn 1 circa 1978)

There used to be a wooden set of bleacher seats starting about the middle of turn three, spanning the north short chute and following the radius of turn 4, all the way to pit entry. (the old pit entry) Just guessing, and Nappy's formula could be used in this application. Im gonna say they where maybe 20 to 35 rows high ( and where horrendous on your behind, good for a stop while walking someplace else and something happened or your favorite hit the bricks)

Of course these seats are gone now. Any footage of the Malloy or Regazoni accidents would show them sitting there. In addition, with the demise of these seats, a better set of wooden seats was added to turn 1 to block the view and discourage snakepit inhabitants to "move along" (which did not work, they could give a flip about the action on the track) These seats still sit there today. (they are great for this formula, as turn one seems to attract the less talented)

Without question, I would say the Speedway easily held 400K and did so several times, as not that long ago. You could not imagine the amount of trash left behind by a crowd of this size. Most times I gauge the amount of trash left behind by the masses as to how big the crowd was. It gets cleaned up alot quicker, granted, there is alot more cheap labor these days. The Speedway used to do it internally. The surrounding grounds where picked up by both IMS folks and vollenteers.

Another barometer of crowd size was the zoo that was the Coke field. It rivals the property that IMS sits on in size. As a kid in the early 1970's, this lot was full from Georgetown all the way to Moller Road on the 30th street size. General Grant would have been envious.... a throng indeed. A couple of fatal auto accidents in the van/jeep craze of the early 70's ended its life.

Anyone who lived through the hell that was the North 40 while waiting for the gates to open knows what a large crowd is. Sometime I could write a couple of stories on this subject, as the race into the place was better than the event itself. Needless to say, Ziggy and the cagey Texan's devised a master scheme of early entry, which was prefected year after year until I bought my house

talk amoungst yourselves!!!

Ziggy

[racer2c]

Well, time for a little refresher course IMO

What nobody has mentioned on a message board that I have seen yet.

The Infield. Thats right ladies and gentleman, the freakin' infield. The dynamics of the "Snake Pit" circa 1970 - 1976 can not be denied. This attraction alone put people on the grounds. I would venture to say that the Infield had the capacity to hold around 50,000. This is hard to judge, but IMS sits on a huge tract of land. You had turn one (snakepit) turn 2, (which was milder, and a good place to park and walk over to bedlam) Turn 3, which fed a stand (more in a second) and turn 4 (which became dodge city after they started cracking down in turn 1 circa 1978)

There used to be a wooden set of bleacher seats starting about the middle of turn three, spanning the north short chute and following the radius of turn 4, all the way to pit entry. (the old pit entry) Just guessing, and Nappy's formula could be used in this application. Im gonna say they where maybe 20 to 35 rows high ( and where horrendous on your behind, good for a stop while walking someplace else and something happened or your favorite hit the bricks)

Of course these seats are gone now. Any footage of the Malloy or Regazoni accidents would show them sitting there. In addition, with the demise of these seats, a better set of wooden seats was added to turn 1 to block the view and discourage snakepit inhabitants to "move along" (which did not work, they could give a flip about the action on the track) These seats still sit there today. (they are great for this formula, as turn one seems to attract the less talented)

Without question, I would say the Speedway easily held 400K and did so several times, as not that long ago. You could not imagine the amount of trash left behind by a crowd of this size. Most times I gauge the amount of trash left behind by the masses as to how big the crowd was. It gets cleaned up alot quicker, granted, there is alot more cheap labor these days. The Speedway used to do it internally. The surrounding grounds where picked up by both IMS folks and vollenteers.

Another barometer of crowd size was the zoo that was the Coke field. It rivals the property that IMS sits on in size. As a kid in the early 1970's, this lot was full from Georgetown all the way to Moller Road on the 30th street size. General Grant would have been envious.... a throng indeed. A couple of fatal auto accidents in the van/jeep craze of the early 70's ended its life.

Anyone who lived through the hell that was the North 40 while waiting for the gates to open knows what a large crowd is. Sometime I could write a couple of stories on this subject, as the race into the place was better than the event itself. Needless to say, Ziggy and the cagey Texan's devised a master scheme of early entry, which was prefected year after year until I bought my house

talk amoungst yourselves!!!

Ziggy

Count me as one who would love to read your Speedway adventures if you ever feel like typing them out. :thumbup:

[dando]

Wow! Did someone put salt peter in the Kool Aid?!? :eek:

-Kevin

[Classic Apex]

275.


saw that. and they say WE pad numbers. 500k my ****ing ass. :rolleyes:

Ohhhhhhhhh, but the funniest part of it is...CrackForum proclaims the inflated numbers as "marketing"...and that's OK.

:rofl: :rolleyes: :rofl:

[Insomniac]

Like I marked it down....... I think it was prior to the season opener at Homestead. I dont keep track of there comings and goings to well. They did a small, well produced tribute to Renna, and I saw it, and this year

Ziggy

Hehe, I wasn't asking for a date, time and channel. ;) Just wondering. IIRC, I had the first race on TV while doing my taxes and don't remember hearing one word and I couldn't believe it.

[JLMannin]

I'm with Ziggy. I think the place used to hold 400k easy. I think 500k is unrealistic, however.

Let me relay a recent experience of mine. In 1995, and friend and went to Indy on the Thursday before pole day. Mind you, it rained (quite hard, BTW) all the way there. It was still raining when we pulled into the infield to park. It did clear up, and there was about two hours of on-track activity. I would estimate the attendance was around 5k or so - quite a feat when it rained most of the day.

Anyway, I digress. When it was not raining and the cars were on track, we sat in the old stands behind pit road. The rows were very close together, and the seat numbers were really crammed in there, like sardines. On race day, your knees would have to be practically touching to remain within you assigned seat. You get the picture. Fast forward to 2004. I accompanied my son's class field trip to the speedway. One of the stops along the tour was the new pit side grandstands - now all concrete and aluminum, really nice. The rows were spaced wider, much more leg room. I'm not sure, but I would guess the number of rows was about the same, as new stands were at least as high, but much deeper. Here is the difference - the seat numbers were noticeably further apart. I would estimate the allocated width for each seat was at least 10% wider.

This makes me wonder in how many of the reconstructed grandstands this was done. By increasing the allocated seat width in some grandstands by a modest 5 to 10%, one could remove 10k to 20k seats and it would not even be noticed.

As Ziggy points out in his post, the infield general admission seats have were phased out over the years. Obviously, to a non-lemming, the interest in the 500 has declined each year since its inception in 1996. It is my opinion that TG was able to keep pace with the declining attendance by eliminating infield general admission, while keeping the seats more or less full. Meanwhile, the scalpers hung in there for several years, thinking things would turn around. In 2002, I started to notice empty seats in the lower rows on race day. by 2003, it was noticable everywhere around the track, several rows up. IIRC, 2003 was the first year track officials admitted the track was not a sell-out. This year will be even worse. Loss of demand has outstripped the ability to recuce seating capacity by such a wide margain that it can no longer be ignored.

Now, the IRL supporters will resort to their tried and true policy of revisionist history by claiming that the track never held more than 275 to 300k, making this years attendance seem like just a mere 10% or so below the historical highs when the actual dip in race day attendance is more like 30 to 40%.

That's my $0.02.

[Railbird]

Like Zig, I grew up "in the shadow".

my best guess is the crowd is down 30 to 40 percent

[EVL29]

Kinda puts Railbird's info about 85,000 unsold tickets* into focus.

A sub 200,000 crowd for the Crapwagon 500?








*=Railbird's post at Crackforum last week about a source in the IMS ticket service claiming 85,000 unsold tickets.......followed by arguements from Wilke about seats vs. tickets.(etc.)

[Napoleon]

It is my opinion that TG was able to keep pace with the declining attendance by eliminating infield general admission, while keeping the seats more or less full.

Every year since the split I have posted exactly what "temp" stands were taken out to do that. I called it the "Franklin Mint" effect. You know how Franklin Mint would advertise "limited availability" which turned out to mean they limited their run of any product to the amount ordered.

My seats were in the temp. stands inside of one. A few years after I started going they start erecting temp stands inside of 4. When the split happened the temp stands inside of 4 where not erected, then over the next 2 or 3 years the stands inside of 3 then inside of 2 where shrunk, then eliminated. Then many seats were eliminated for the F1 construction.