The local track here in Richmond has two races a year, and had sellouts for as long as I could remember. The track capacity had been expanded to over 112,000, and all the seats were full as recently as a decade ago.
Of course, for a variety of reasons, folks stopped coming to a few races in droves. Richmond, between tearing down stands and tarping others, reduced their seating capacity to 60,000.
So, when I flipped to the race on TV (was primarily watching hockey), I kept thinking "where are the crowds?" Mind you, the weather was warm (about 90 degrees) and humid, but otherwise good. I thought it looked like there were 30,000 in the stands.
It seems like I wasn't the only one that noticed:
http://www.richmond.com/sports/auto-rac ... 0cb89.html
Obviously, the post-2007 economy hasn't helped, nor have ticket prices. Nor is NASCAR alone in attendance issues (I've seen pictures from a local start-up indoor football team and it looks like there are more people on the field than in the stands; scarier still, I've seen pictures from other teams in their league and they look worse.) The aging out of the top stars and non-development of the next generation of star drivers hasn't helped either.A thrilling day of side-by-side racing came down to the final laps, with several big-name drivers jockeying for a victory that ultimately went to Joey Logano.
The only thing missing was the crowd.
A race that drew a sold-out grandstand of 112,029 just a decade ago mustered perhaps a quarter of that during Sunday’s running. NASCAR doesn’t release attendance figures, but the venue, which has been trimmed to around 60,000 seats, was half-full at its peak and far emptier when Logano crossed the finish line.
But this just blew me away. I think RIR had 20 or 30 years (two races a year) of sellouts, and now this.
