Mexico City: Fun with numbers

[Jim Wilke]

Instead of our old favorite, fun with pictures, today we'll do some math exercises:

Representatives from race promoter OCESA have reported that nearly 112,000 fans turned out to see the Rolex Series in its inaugural two-day visit to Mexico City. Attendance during Friday's practice and qualifying sessions was an impressive 43,751, while 68,184 Mexican race fans came out to support countryman Luis Diaz in the No. 01 Telmex Chip Ganassi Racing Lexus Riley for a two-day total of 111,935.

link

We also had this:

Attendance for this weekend's Champ Car race in Mexico city was 271,569, down significantly from over 350,000 last year.

Let's see, doing the math means that the promoter wants us to believe that there were 159,634 there on race day, a very neat trick since they closed a bunch of stands and announced prior to the race they would sell 30,000 GA tickets and 85,000 grandstand seats and they were a long ways from full. How do you get 160,000 at a track that is only set up for 115,000 and isn't full, a track that announced 90,000 for the Busch race that had a similar or even larger crowd?

These numbers came from the promoter, Gerry Forsythe's partners, and they will be printed and repeated as gospel.

[downtowndeco]

The reason they pump up/make up these numbers are because it's the one thing that can't be concretely verified that they can try & woo potential sponsors with.

Their TV numbers equal "Monster Truck Jamboree". The drivers, for the most part, are unheard of. The only thing they can try & point to as a plus for the series is "GIGANTIC, FANTASTIC, HUGE THREE DAY CROWDS!!"

So far the sponsors aren't buying it.

[rocketdoc]

Instead of our old favorite, fun with pictures, today we'll do some math exercises:



link

We also had this:



Let's see, doing the math means that the promoter wants us to believe that there were 159,634 there on race day, a very neat trick since they closed a bunch of stands and announced prior to the race they would sell 30,000 GA tickets and 85,000 grandstand seats and they were a long ways from full. How do you get 160,000 at a track that is only set up for 115,000 and isn't full, a track that announced 90,000 for the Busch race that had a similar or even larger crowd?

These numbers came from the promoter, Gerry Forsythe's partners, and they will be printed and repeated as gospel.

Perhaps just like the inflated numbers for the Indy 500 attendence, for the past few decades.

Funny numbers.

[Jim Wilke]

As always, please post any numbers from the Indy 500 that generate from the IRL or IMS.

[downtowndeco]

Perhaps just like the inflated numbers for the Indy 500 attendence, for the past few decades.

Funny numbers.

Do you think any sponsors that had a stake in this years 500 felt like they were cheated, lied to or mislead?

[ptistheboss]

Rockstar and Pennzoil. They had maybe 30 seconds of TV time.

[Rommey]

Of course there is proof that the numbers aren't real, right?

IMS not refuting an estimate from a newspaper is actually consenting to the information as being actual. Everyone scoffed at the 257K number put out there, but we still hear about 300K+ even though there are sections of empty grandstands visible during the race.

As always, please post any numbers from the Indy 500 that generate from the IRL or IMS.

So I guess the official attendance for the I500 is/was zero?

[Jim Wilke]

The only official comment I can recall is that when Tony was asked about the Indy Star number of 257,000, he said it was 'a little light.' But we can do a little fun with pictures involving empty grandstands, if you'd like. I'll go first:



Those stands represent a good chunk of the 85,000 seats MC had for sale. Please tell me how they can justify 160,000 in attendance. I'd also like to point out that I started this thread to deal with apparent inconsistencies in the numbers released by the CC promoter. If you have similar numbers from the IRL's promoters, feel free to start another thread. Or you can post them here, I suppose. Your turn.

[Jim Wilke]

The picture came from CC's official website:

http://www.champcarworldseries.com/C...1106P_0012.jpg

[Jakester]

Practice, qualifying, or race day?

As always, please post any numbers from the Indy 500 that generate from the IRL or IMS.

Representatives from race promoter OCESA have reported that nearly 112,000 fans turned out to see the Rolex Series in its inaugural two-day visit to Mexico City.

ditto

[SportscarBruce]

Seems to me Tecate would have been better served by sponsoring Fernandez at Indy than this thing.

[The Beer Baron]

Seems to me Tecate would have been better served by sponsoring Fernandez at Indy than this thing.

seems to me that you are not of tecate's promotional team nor have influence over their budgets.
gtta love that indycentric mentality

[ptistheboss]

Seems to me Tecate would have been better served by sponsoring Fernandez at Indy than this thing.

The only way he would have gotten more than 10 seconds of TV time would have been if he crashed Danica.

[Truth Detector]

seems to me that you are not of tecate's promotional team nor have influence over their budgets.
gtta love that indycentric mentality

indycentric or ratingscentric???

Is there a difference??

[JoeBob]

Rockstar and Pennzoil. They had maybe 30 seconds of TV time.

Don't forget Jonathan Byrd. Primary sponsor on the 4th place car, and zero seconds of TV time.