Race Day attendance figures.

[leopard]

A newspaper said for this year's F1 season Bahrain claimed they have sold out all the tickets of some 100 k for the race will be held after Sepang.

Despite without racing background, i think we will remain to see some those modern race. GP France, for instance, a traditional race with such tight racing background will have to disappear from 2008 calendar.

Seeing this year is the 4th season Qatar joined motogp, with such low proclivity of attendance in every season, i think besides money, Qatar has been coming into consideration about modern race.

Singapore is approaching F1 for street race, would be another after Monaco, i don't think they have yet to build a race designed specially for motorsport, would be an acceptable issue as Singapore is one of the busiest traffic of business in the world will attract more foreign come into the country for enjoying leisure and drive for their business.

[ChrisS]

A newspaper said for this year's F1 season Bahrain claimed they have sold out all the tickets of some 100 k for the race will be held after Sepang.

Thats probably for the 3 days of the GP, it cant be for race day since the circuit has 50k capacity

[leopard]

Thats probably for the 3 days of the GP, it cant be for race day since the circuit has 50k capacity

Probably, they didn't specify which GP the 100k tickets sold out for.

[Kropotkin]

Mugello less than Assen

Assen is a huge event, and a lot of British and German fans come to Assen to see the race too. Actually, I expected Assen to have more spectators, I thought they got over 100,000 on race day.

[Kropotkin]

If you look at those numbers, they reveal a problem with MotoGP that also relates to the sponsors discussion we are having.

I think its save to expect about the same numbers this season plus about 75000 spectators at Misano. That would mean that more than 40% of MotoGP spectators come from 2 countries

Well, it's a little more complex than that. Several of those tracks are at full capacity. If I remember correctly, 51,000 is capacity for Laguna Seca, for example. I believe that Mugello is also more or less at capacity, while Assen can fit another 10,000 people in (though this may also have something to do with those figures coming from the first year after Assen was wrecked, I'm sorry, I mean modified, so there wasn't the space for all the people they wanted.

TV viewing figures may be a more accurate measure of popularity, but again, that's difficult to measure. Again, if I remember correctly, the Valencia race had something like 12 million Spanish viewers (from a population of 40 million), around 10 million Italian views (from a population of about 60 million) and 100,000 viewers in the US. But the US figures also have something to do with the fact that it's on Speed (a pay-per-view channel) and it's not live, whereas the race was broadcast in Spain by the national public broadcaster, TVE.

[ChrisS]

Speed isnt a PPV channel, in New Jersey I used to get it as part of basic cable.

But their international motorcycle coverage (or coverage of any motorsport other than NASCAR) isnt very good. they either show the races as "Same Day Delay" or even worst as part of "2 Wheel Tuesday"

[Kropotkin]

Speed isnt a PPV channel, in New Jersey I used to get it as part of basic cable.

Okay, thanks, I didn't realize. I know that some people have to pay extra to get Speed, as it isn't part of the basic cable package everywhere in the US.

[ChrisS]

BTW speaking of basic and extra channels, why is Eurosport free/part of basic in all of Europe but extra (part of news) in the UK?

[Kropotkin]

BTW speaking of basic and extra channels, why is Eurosport free/part of basic in all of Europe but extra (part of news) in the UK?

Cable contracts. Eurosport is not part of the basic package in all of Europe, just most of it. It depends what the cable company has decided to put in their basic package, based on what they have paid to Eurosport to carry the programming.

[leopard]

I don't know Eurosport whereabouts, it suddenly disappeared from free and paid TV here :\