Talladega expecting smaller-than-normal crowd
Quote selected text Published October 4th, 2007 in NASCAR News
Talladega Superspeedway likely will have a smaller crowd this weekend for its UAW-Ford 500 Nextel Cup race, International Speedway Corp. officials said Thursday.
“While we expect to draw a strong crowd for the weekend, advance ticket sales are trending behind [2006],” said ISC Chief Operating Officer John Saunders during a call with financial analysts Thursday.
High fuel prices impact Talladega sales because nearly 75 percent of the ticket holders come from out of state.
“We have significantly improved attendance for this year’s event weekend as compared to 2005 and have retained a sizable percentage of the new event attendees from last year,” Saunders said.
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If ISC pays for it, I will be a seat filler like they have for the emmys and stuff.
cuase they already know the 24 will dominate AGAIN more beer cans for his collection. MAN I JUST LOVE WHEN PEOPLE BASH ON JEFF. its funny hearing aw he cheated or hes gay etc. it just makes me laugh and it seems jeff enjoys making fans hate him so yeah go 24
it has nothing to do with the fact of gas, I think their is something else that is going
on here on why their attendence is dropping at least for this race. NASCAR keeps
changing things and people are sick of it and have been sick of it for sometime now. Fans
stop watching the sport while their aint enough new ones coming in anymore. It won’t much
longer before NASCAR realizes how much they fu**** up on this one when all the mainstream
fans leave and theirs no one left because they turned their back on the fans that have been
here for years. New Bristol made for completely boring racing, the floorin a car all the
way around a racetrack and hoping for a push(sorry folks that aint racing, any of us could
hold a pedal to the floor and turn all day long) at Daytona and Talladega, the almost
endless amount of cookie cutter 1.5 mile race tracks and how a bulk of them are in the
chase(so much for a real championship) and the lack of variety of tracks in the chase.
NASCAR better be happy their top level racin is on Sundays because if it was on Saturday’s,
they’d have no chance against College Football. It used to be NASCAR then Football for me,
but as much as NASCAR wants that to be the belief of most it is a Fan of theirs since 97
that has now reversed those roles because of how boring the racing is anymore. Thanks NASCAR,
because y’all of totally screwed up a once great series that wasn’t put in a box and shipped
out the same way every week as complete crap.
I also think the fuel price excuse is pathetic. I’m looking at the Department of Energy historical stats for the first week of October. The average Lower Atlantic (GA,SC,FLA,NC) retail price for a gallon of gas was:
Oct 3, 2005 - $3.02
Oct 2, 2006 - $2.24
Oct 1, 2007 - $2.79
The Gulf Coast region (AL,MS,LA,AR) was about $0.10 less per gallon in all cases for those time periods.
So if that’s the case and $0.55 per gallon of gas to get to and from Talladega is the difference between people going one year and not going the next, that’s just sad. Here’s the math…
According to Google, it’s 230 miles round trip from Atlanta to Talladega. If you drive an SUV that’s getting about 18MPG, that’s 13 gallons (rounded up to the nearest gallon) of gas round-trip. Total difference in gas from last year to this year = $7.15. I don’t think the cost of a tall boy at the track is keeping anyone from driving over from Atlanta!
So, what’s the REAL reason for the drop in attendance? I could blame boring racing at a lot of places, but not Talladega. I think it might just be overall disinterest in the chase, etc… and not something specific to the CoT and Talladega. I personally don’t care if I miss a Phoenix or California race, but I make it very clear that I am not to be disturbed when watching ‘Dega!
get rid of cookie cutters, I watch this site more than I watch the races! I just catch the highlights on Speed!
It’s because NASCAR has done it’s best to make the races boring - the Chase sucks - there are too many commercials, and every time there is one, something interesting finally happens and we have to watch it on replay. All the tracks are the same, the COT stinks and everyone hates it - do away with all the fancy bells and whistles and go back to real racing… Please???
I agree with Jatson and Michele!
And the # 1 reason is: Ladies showing off their ta ta’s are now escorted out of the stands. It’s just not
the same anymore..fast cars, warm sun, cold beer and every now and then a strange set of hooters popping out!
Rick wrote:
LMAO!
the cars are all the same,not good for racing, I want a STOCK CAR