That means they averaged about 7k a day. That's terrible. The Iowa High School State meet averages about 13k a day over 3 days and about 40k total.
How many of those were actual fans that did not have a family member participating at the Iowa HS State meet? How many hs athletes participated at the state meet?
It does need to move away from Eugene, rotate it around the country. USATF should make it easier for other locations/facilities to hold the champs. This goes to the point that while Nike is a huge supporter of USA T&F, they sway too much power.
+1. High school meets aren't full of fans of the sport it's all family and friends.
70's White Flight from LA created Mt Sac XC and TF, and completely ruined Oregon, Portland, SLC, SLO, Fresno, Bakersfield, Fisco, Vegas, Boise, Phoenix, Dago, etc.
50 years and two generations later, Whites have changed no longer flee when Blacks move in the neighborhood.
LA is being gentrified today.
DTLA, Inglewood, South Central is being re-populated by white sand immigrants.
Yet Eugne is still populated by L.A. clowns spouting b.s. Nike written tall tales about Bowerman, Prefontaine, etc.
That 30K in Des Moines included thousands of accredited athletes, media, volunteers and staff, the numbers for Hayward 2023 specifically excluded those.
They should give out free tickets, then charge $4 for a pop/water/soda. Like the airport!
What airport has free tickets?
Joking. I get it.
USATF will claim that 27k is a huge success because the 2022 championships only got @13k. Of course, 2022 was still in the shadow of the pandemic with a lot of people reluctant to travel.
But why build a 25k seat stadium if the best you can do is 7-8k a night? Why didn't Nike build a facility in a major metro area where they could realistically see 15-20k in attendance? LA, San Diego, Chicago, Washington DC, etc. are all places where summer weather is reasonable if not ideal. They all have major airports and huge local population that would help fill the stadium.
San Diego and LA are easier to get to but I’d be surprised if they drew bigger crowds over 4 days. How many would come from across the country for USAs there? How many locals attended the meets at Dignity Health back when they kept up their track? DC and Chicago can be blazing in the summer, so that’s a no go.
The meets were better attended this year compared to 2022, especially Saturday and Sunday. The stadium is simply too big, the tickets are expensive and few people want to sit in the exposed part of the stadium on the back stretch. I will be at Pre and, based on the spam emails of ticket offers I continue to receive, am assuming that the meet will be poorly attended, which is disappointing. Yet, the fans that make it out to the meet will be knowledgeable and loud, making up for the lack in numbers.
Track needs to follow the lead of big events like Fomula 1 and the big horse races. Bring in a big name artist, have a post race concert and make the whole event a party.
The 2001 US Champs had 28,562 in attendance over 4 days in Eugene at the old Hayward Field. But I don't know if that included credentialed people, athletes, etc. 22 years later and not much of a difference after all the "promotion" of the sport by USATF. Heck there were approximately 31,000 at SnapDragon Stadium in San Diego last night for the US Men's Soccer team loss to Panama in the Concacaf Gold Cup semi finals. Pretty sad.
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