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**OW fan in OK** · 12-09-2003, 12:48 PM

St Pete.............40,000............0
Long Beach......65,000
Miami................26,000
Mid O................30,000............0
Clev..................30,000
Road Amer........25,000
Milw..................25,000
Denver..............30,000
Portland............30,000............0
Laguna..............25,000

Lets all donate a lil pocket change and get Pook the book "Math for the Challenged" for Christmas. Enough money for 2004,,,,, over 2 million fans,,,,,,,

**OW fan in OK** · 12-09-2003, 01:05 PM

Divide by 3 for individual people and it would be low,,,, so to be fair I like the 2.50.

2.4 million claimed
Divide by 2.50 to get individual people
960,000 different people

Loss of at least 5 races next year so the total attendance can be expected to be around 500,000 different people??

**The Beer Baron** · 12-09-2003, 01:25 PM

at least they didnt revise 2002's attenance to make it appear there was an increase in 2003!

**indycool** · 12-09-2003, 01:36 PM

CART's first proxy statement a couple months ago, page 41, "reduced race attendance" since 2001 was a reason given for CART's problems. They think that was the only place they had to tell the truth.

I again ask, if there were 112,000 in Cleveland, where's the money? And Miami. And the other CART-promoted races that lost $9.5 million.

**tbyars** · 12-09-2003, 02:13 PM

Originally posted by indycool
I again ask, if there were 112,000 in Cleveland, where's the money? And Miami. And the other CART-promoted races that lost $9.5 million.

IC, one of the things I always remember was something that came up during the attendance scandal surrounding Cleveland several years ago. At that time, someone - Miller or Saal or someone - when commenting on the raceday attendance that was about twice the number of seats available, made it a point of indicating that CART, for attendance purposes, counts EVERYONE! Team members and their families, CART personnel, media, caterers, law enforcement folks directing traffic and supplying security, even the track personnel that change the trash bags. EVERYONE!

This is, shall we say, not traditional......

**Boli-Nica** · 12-09-2003, 02:28 PM

CART's first proxy statement a couple months ago, page 41, "reduced race attendance" since 2001 was a reason given for CART's problems. They think that was the only place they had to tell the truth.

Reduced race attendance at their main venues like Cleveland and RA., which were offset by big totals at the Canadian, Mexican and Australian venues. 221,000 race day at Mexico City, nuff said.

These totals are not bad considering the lack of sponsors in the series, since the manufacturers and sponsors would normally assume some of the costs in sponsoring different events. When the sanctioning body goes it alone it loses $$$ With that considered, getting 30k on race day in Cleveland, (estimate from above) and 25k on Friday is pretty good, when you consider that maybe 40k total showed up both days at Michigan.

-- the message here is that some of the road courses here are worthy venues that if properly promoted and with title sponsors could be strong venues for whatever series races open wheel cars.

**indycool** · 12-09-2003, 02:42 PM

"Reduced race attendance" meant what it said. It didn't specify event-by-event. In 2002, CART announced RECORD attendances at most events. A year later, it's "reduced race attendance."

As for the economics lesson, a sanctioning body doing the promoting isn't ALWAYS a loser. A sanctioning body doing it the way CART did it is because it believed its own press releases.
If races depend on a title sponsor alone for profitability, then the values are skewed somewhere in the balance among all entities involved.

Why should anyone believe the 221,000 on race day at Mexico City because of the other attendance -- or money -- lies?

Miami 2002: CART.com said 81,000 for three days. A document presented by agreement to the city showed 14,000 paid and 12,000 freebies on Race Day. That means to reach 81,000 of anything, they had to have more people on Friday and Saturday than Race Day.

St. Petersburg 2003: Pook told the St. Pete Times they had around 50,000 for the weekend. CART.com reported 90,000. Which of those figures are used in compiling those attendance figures?

Monterrey 2003: CART.com said 217,000 for the weekend. The race lost $4.3 million. What equates there?

And with all those boxcar attendance figures, most other promoters lost money. If the numbers were true, why?

**indycool** · 12-09-2003, 02:45 PM

tbyars, understand....but that's 2,500-3,000 people MAX. Not 40,000 different between two CART entities, one being the CEO and the other being its main mode of communication, at St. Petersburg.

**Jim Wilke** · 12-09-2003, 08:02 PM

Actually, this phantom number is a lot higher than you might think. I'm working from memory here but I am reasonably sure that CART issues something like 9,000 hard cards and then counts them for every session, every race. Never mind thatmany of them went to PacifiCare and most of them will never be used, ignore the fact that a bundle went to various media outlets that no longer cover CART; their position is that these cards represent free admission and their is no way to count how many of them actually show up.....so they count them all for all three days. Now, let's see 9,000 X 3 days X 19 races is, carry the one, 513,000. That's 20% of their total attendance....

**indycool** · 12-09-2003, 08:14 PM

Whatever about number shuffling. CART has lied about the balance sheet or lied about attendance. CART's call as to which. Period.

**El Mariachi** · 12-09-2003, 08:19 PM

Originally posted by Jim Wilke
Actually, this phantom number is a lot higher than you might think. I'm working from memory here but I am reasonably sure that CART issues something like 9,000 hard cards and then counts them for every session, every race. Never mind thatmany of them went to PacifiCare and most of them will never be used, ignore the fact that a bundle went to various media outlets that no longer cover CART; their position is that these cards represent free admission and their is no way to count how many of them actually show up.....so they count them all for all three days. Now, let's see 9,000 X 3 days X 19 races is, carry the one, 513,000. That's 20% of their total attendance....

Nothing but speculation on your part

You have no clue .....

Nice try trying to pass this off as fact, when you have absolutely no idea how everything works.

**Jim Wilke** · 12-09-2003, 08:30 PM

CART posted an attendance figure of just under 2.4 million on their website. It doesn't say estimate, there are no survey numbers, no turnstile counts, no ticket sales information, nothing to substantiate these numbers and yet they gave that count as a fact. How can any reasonable adult accept these numbers, given that the announcement was made by the guy who said 'there is enough money to run a season next year if no buyer is found'?

**indycool** · 12-09-2003, 08:34 PM

Okay, somebody tell me what they believe: Did St. Pete have 50,000 or 90,000? And somebody tell me which figure was used for CART's attendance total.

**Climber** · 12-09-2003, 09:12 PM

Originally posted by El Mariachi
Nothing but speculation on your part

You have no clue .....

Nice try trying to pass this off as fact, when you have absolutely no idea how everything works.

But, I thought Mr. Wilkie had a hard pass to every CART race and was therefore qualified to comment on all the inner workings of race weekends....

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