User talk:Andrewduff

Indy 500 attendance
There seems to be two issues here, one of which I didn't realize when I reverted your changes:
 * 1) Is the 500 the largest attended one-day sporting event? With 350,000 - 400,000 attendance, I think it is.  Even though official attendance figures are not available, the news media will give unofficial estimates based on the knowledge of the number of seats and an estimate of how many are empty.
 * 2) Does it have the largest TV audience? Perhaps not.  In fact, I suspect that the Daytona 500 has a larger TV audience.

Perhaps we could agree to this wording:


 * "The Greatest Spectacle in Racing" is one of the oldest and richest motorsport events in existence, having the largest attendance and one of the largest TV/radio audiences (recent estimates placing the latter in excess of 320 million) of any single-day sporting events worldwide. While the official attendance is not disclosed by Speedway management, news media estimate attendance in excess of 350,000.

I'll leave the actual wording to you - after all it is your article! However, in my opinion, you should emphasise the unique aspect of the Indy 500 - that it physically pulls in at least 350000 spectators (probably closer to 400000) every year, in just one day, no other sporting event comes close to that. I seem to remember that football matches at the Marecana in Brazil could have more than 200000 people, and at Hampden Park in Glasgow (Scotland) the record is around 150000, again for football (soccer).

Without becoming too philosophical, the amazing thing about the race is that in this day and age, when you can easily sit at home and watch the race (in more comfortable conditions), it still attracts massive crowds. Soccer attendances in lots of countries are falling because of television. Not the Indianapolis 500. It's almost like a sort of pilgrimage, or if you excuse the term, a Motorsport Mecca. For the organisers of the Indy 500, all those people must create a logistical nightmare, and pulling that off year after year is, for me, a much greater feat than putting cameras around the track and beaming out the images.

Which leads me back to my original gripe - I still believe that he 320 million figure for a TV audience is far too big. Do you really think 4 times as many people watch the Indy 500 than they do the SuperBowl? That said, I have no evidence to contradict you - as you seem to have no evidence to confirm it (which is why you ask for a citation, I suppose?). What to do then? Either you leave the figure in (if you trust it enough) or leave it out while saying "huge TV audiences" or something to that effect. Either way I'll accept your decision, I have no wish to impeach on all the work you have done.

What I guess I'm trying to say is that the uniqueness of the Indy 500 comes not from the television audience but from it's huge crowds. In fact, in comparison, how many people watch it on TV hardly seems important - what is important is beng present. No point in trying to compete with 1.6 billion that watched the World Cup Final, when you can smile proudly in knowing that only 70000 were actually THERE...

I hope this helps, and in any case thankyou for having taken your time to write about the race in the first place. Yours,

Andrewduff 19:37, 22 September 2006 (UTC)