Please don't take this as a NASCAR v F1 thread, I am honestly asking a question.

I am a fan of all sorts of motorsports. It's only recently that I could watch F1 after getting the Speed channel, so until this point I have mostly been ignorant of F1 in general. Now I can schedule my DVR to record F1 events as well as NASCAR, Lemans and other racing...

I was watching the F1 qualifying at Abu Dhabi and was very impressed by the new race complex, however I was shocked to hear that the fan capacity was 50,000! Surely this is a mistake, I honestly expected to hear that the full capacity would be 100,000 or more as this is what the NASCAR tracks can hold. I think Bristol, a very small 1/2 mile track is essentially a stadium with a race track inside, can hold more than 150,000!

Is this attendance number correct? With such low attendance, is F1 king due to TV ratings? Since the tracks are spread across the world, does it make it harder for the average F1 fan to attend races?

Its just the track, Silverstone holds 120,000 IIRC

Because ovals are enclosed that means you can get the grandstands closer to the track. Therefore you can make them bigger and hence more spectators are held.

I think 150,000 - 200,000 fans over 3 days is generally considered good for F1. I don't think F1 has that many fans in the middle east so i would be surprised if they even filled those 50,000 seats.

NASCAR isn't exactly an international series its more like your national sport. I bet NASCAR tickets are a heap cheaper than F1. I have watched a few NASCAR races and i couldn't believe the crowds that attended!

Ok i was way off with my figures. I was trying to remember them from an F1 magazine. Just found the magazine and these were the figure for the Melbourne grand prix.

From what I've googled, NASCAR starts from 90 US $ ticket prices, but I'm not sure if this is for the whole weekend or just the race.

The TV audience is pretty huge though.

IBTI! (In before the Intrepid)

Quote from ATHome :

From what I've googled, NASCAR starts from 90 US $ ticket prices, but I'm not sure if this is for the whole weekend or just the race.

Until this year my inlaws held season tickets at Texas motor speedway. I want to say that they were $1000-1500 each for the year which included both NASCAR events, the indy race and the associated Nationwide series events (similar to NASCAR cars, but down on power). These tickets were nice seats, but nowhere near the best. In the grandstands on the front stretch right on turn 4 about 20 rows up.

They would pull their travel trailer and make a weekend of it...

The $90 tickets were likely on the backstretch and for a single race only.

I didn't mean to imply that NASCAR was a worldwide series (if I did?), I was just curious of how the attendance and tv ratings compare between the two series.

In regards to the F1 numbers posted above, are they counting individuals, or do the 400,000+ attendance include people who attend all 4 days of the race?

Quote from JackDaMaster :

Its just the track, Silverstone holds 120,000 IIRC

Because ovals are enclosed that means you can get the grandstands closer to the track. Therefore you can make them bigger and hence more spectators are held.

That makes sense to me, I've always figured that while I think I would enjoy driving a road course more, I enjoy watching ovals simply because you can watch the entire track at once. I don't think I would enjoy attending a road course simply because it seems to me that I would be watching cars braking for a corner, then accelerating down a straight completely ignorant of what was happening on the rest of the track.

I think it would be cool if they added chicanes and such down the straights on the big ovals, then we would get the best of both worlds!

There are massive TV boards at road courses so you can see the other end of the track as well

Quote from tehlump :

I was shocked to hear that the fan capacity was 50,000!

Yes but how many Nascar tracks have hotels built over the actual track, people were watching from the comfort of their hotel room. I'm already thinking of selling off a few body parts I don't need so I can afford to go there next year.

Quote from ATC Quicksilver :

Yes but how many Nascar tracks have hotels built over the actual track, people were watching from the comfort of their hotel room. I'm already thinking of selling off a few body parts I don't need so I can afford to go there next year.

Well, Texas doesn't have a hotel actually over the track, but turn 2 is backed by a condo...you could watch the actual race from the comfort of your living room!

Quote from tehlump :

I think it would be cool if they added chicanes and such down the straights on the big ovals, then we would get the best of both worlds!

Which is why the top-class ovals in America are building road courses in the infield now. Daytona, Indy etc. have built road courses inside them, and some of the oval is used in the road course.

Example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vD6W33__-Cs

Bristol - lots of racing fans
Abu Dhabi - lots of camels

Quote from sil3ntwar :

Ok i was way off with my figures. I was trying to remember them from an F1 magazine. Just found the magazine and these were the figure for the Melbourne grand prix.

Thur Fri Sat Sun Total
'96 65,000 || 81,000 || 101,000 || 154,000 ||| 401,000
'97 48,000 || 66,000 || 68,000 || 107,000 ||| 289,000
'98 46,000 || 67,000 || 81,000 || 103,000 ||| 297,000
'99 48,700 || 74,600 || 104,000 || 118,000 ||| 345,000

More recent figures:


For comparison two other popular Australian races:


http://www.austadiums.com/sport/results.php?sid=8

It was mentioned that they are planning to increase the capacity for next year, and that the tickets were priced "fairly".

If there's not a huge demand then I think they did the right thing, though. Better to have a small number of grandstands full, than a load of empty seats or stands detracting from what little atmosphere a new track is able to create.

crowd attendences mean nothing in terms of popularity.

For example, AFL in australia averages more people in crowd averages then the English Premier League, but the amount of people watching it on TV wouldn't even be 1/50th of the EPL.

Also proven by the fact Bathurst had less crowds then Surfures Paridise Champ car round, Bathurst is in a pretty remote location so its hard for fans to access, but the TV ratings for it would be much higher then the Champ Car surfers race(well in Australia atleast).

Quote from tehlump :

Until this year my inlaws held season tickets at Texas motor speedway. I want to say that they were $1000-1500 each for the year which included both NASCAR events, the indy race and the associated Nationwide series events (similar to NASCAR cars, but down on power). These tickets were nice seats, but nowhere near the best. In the grandstands on the front stretch right on turn 4 about 20 rows up.

They would pull their travel trailer and make a weekend of it...

The $90 tickets were likely on the backstretch and for a single race only.

I didn't mean to imply that NASCAR was a worldwide series (if I did?), I was just curious of how the attendance and tv ratings compare between the two series.

In regards to the F1 numbers posted above, are they counting individuals, or do the 400,000+ attendance include people who attend all 4 days of the race?

Well... actually what I heard at Abu Dhabi the prices were about $730 (source: german commentators said €500) just for the 3 days and each night at the trackside hotel were additional $1400. The German Grand Prix prices were "only" $300, so Abu Dhabi costs twice as much as the German Grand Prix, for example. This does include the Formula One Grand Prix and every feeder race to this, like Formula BMW, Porsche Supercup, GP2 (Asia) Series and some local series, which are all featured at the one weekend.

I think the main aspect was just to fill the seats and to announce several weeks before the event that the race is sold out That there have been only 50.000 seats available was something I did not know until race day.

... The Signal Iduna Park in Dortmund, Germany. Has got over 80.000 seats and it is only a football stadium

The thing is Bernie doesn't need high attendance since he makes money much better by selling tv-coverages for a ridiculous price.

Quote from hyntty :

The thing is Bernie doesn't need high attendance since he makes money much better by selling tv-coverages for a ridiculous price.

What's ridiculous about it?

Ridiculously high?

Quote from hyntty :

Ridiculously high?

Debatable. Supply and demand. Enough wealthy companies see value and want to advertise during an F1 broadcast for the commercial networks to see value in acquiring the rights to broadcast at those costs. Costs which are only so high because there are enough of these networks that competition pushes them to what is actually their true value.

F1 would quickly change if the commercial networks suddenly decided F1 isn't worth anywhere near the high price, say if viewing figures tumbled because of a rival series or loss of interest in the sport, but as long as we all continue to watch it then that value exists.