4,082 the attendance in Eugene

Well what do you expect. Its in a small town, in a small remote state on a medium size college campus.

There is a reason why the NHL, NBA, MLB and the NFL (except for Green Bay) are in large metropolitan areas.

That many are showing up to the A’s right now I think…In general, this Friday night meet distance night isn’t exactly the most broad appeal.

Not a good look before worlds. The timing of this meet is pretty unfortunate thought. Probably 75% of the people who would want to go to this meet are either high school or college runners or coaches and parents of those runners. NCAAs, State meets, and school being still in session rules out a lot of people. Oh and Eugene is a horrible place to get to let alone stay overnight in.

Rainy forecast for tomorrow. Hoping to get a seat with some overhead cover but the competition should still be good. It was a great night for distance events even with a crowd smaller than the PAC 12 meet.

I was talking to an agent and he thought the crowd was much less than 4,000. What's the capacity of this place? Full capacity is 12,000. Now way was this 1/3rd full and most of the upper deck was cordoned off.

Thats why insaid it was less than the PAC 12 crowd. 3 big meets after tomorrow and im hopeful that at least the Worlds is full. Eugene is preparing for Gridlock and I have a plan to get around/through it but I can imagine a lot of people just crashing wherever they can right there around campus. Dont be surprised to find people in the graveyard overnight.

It's not about size, it's what you do with it. The event everyone references when talking about improving track and field is the Night of the 10000 PBs in the UK. It's a brilliant event with a raucous crowd, but there's only 5,000 people there. The atmosphere comes from holding it at a tiny venue and getting the crowd close to the action, while making it a festival atmosphere with beer and music. A standalone 10k is a good idea but it won't fill a stadium, which ends up looking bad on TV

This is about what you should expect. Track and field isn't on many people's minds these days outside of this message board or those actively participating in high school or college.

Plus, the money, time, and effort to get to Eugene is a big hurdle for those outside the area that would want to attend.

Eugene is a massive airline ticket of at least $1200 to reach for 97% of Americans. Plenty of rooms available but price gouging scaring many away. Lots of tickets still available in decent seats. Eugene will not be overwhelmed.

Wow, that's more than I'd expected.

Also if the capacity is 12,000 I imagine they're going to have to massively expand that for the world championships? I heard the track is really fast though :).

There are a lot of issues with traveling, flights and hotels are not appealing to many these days.

I'd love to go but flying across country after having covid just isn't appealing.

Having said that, if I lived in the PNW I'd have gone

Well gee, according to this board everyone is doping, any celebration or display is “embarrassing,” athletes shouldn’t post on social media or have YouTube channels, having endorsements and posting about them is annoying, the second an athlete does one thing you don’t like you’ve “lost all respect” for them and will never support them, going on a podcast is attention seeking, you spend hours a day attacking all the athletes and smearing them…and then you come and cry “why isn’t track popular!”

Not enough people do the griddy.

I'm a runner to start. But 99% of the general population could care or never heard of the athletes competing in Track or running. Talent follows money--NFL, NBA or even golf as these sports are way more entertaining too. A very, very small % of the population are into competitive running. They may jog for exercise, etc but they don't really care about performance. I love running but it's the level with major sports. We are niche.

The Iowa HS state meet had over 10k people attend for 3 days straight. 39,415 total tickets sold. If a HS meet can pull in that big a crowd, surely a huge pro meet can change something up.

Or maybe Buffalo, Memphis, NOLA, OKC… There are several sports teams not in major markets.

OK- I don't expect that you've read my posts concerning this- it's a big message board.
I've been running (and have been a fan) for 51 years:
1. There was a time when the general public showed up to track meets and watched on TV- google the Ryan/Liquori race from 1971 and watch.

2. At one time in the 1980's the NYC and Chicago marathons had higher TV ratings than any baseball game except the world series and any football game except the playoffs.

3. I remember the Wide World of Sports covering road miles, track meets, road races.

It's all in marketing and exposure.

And, outside of the opinions of some of the troll/losers on this message board, we actually have the type of athlete kids should be looking up to. The nature of the sport is to live a healthy ;lifestyle.

The production of meets is horrible- watching a meet on TV and 30 minutes in we've seen 2 heats of the 100 and 2 heats of the hurdles.

Granted most sports don't have much action- football and baseball have more down time than people actually moving- but at least they APPEAR to be getting something done.

Move the meets along, keep the action coming. And get some announcers who know what they're doing.

As long as I get a decent salary, I don't care.

runnersworld.com

USATF Board Deals With Fallout From CEO’s Salary, Olympic Committee Challenges

Meetings and resignations reveal discord. Meanwhile, the USOPC is asking for governance changes.

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