Largest live audience for a sporting event in 2023? It wasn’t the Super Bowl or the Kentucky Derby

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May’s Indianapolis 500 beat out the Super Bowl, NBA Finals, NHL Stanley Cup Finals and NCAA College Football Championship for the title of the most-attended sporting event of 2023 to date. A whopping 230,000 tickets were sold for the big car race.

February 28, 2023, at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Important facts

The Indianapolis 500 came out on top with about 80,000 tickets The Daytona 500which February saw a sell-out crowd again, filling the grandstands around the 2.5-mile track at Daytona International Speedway in Florida. The organizers estimated the total audience, including the grandstand and the infield turf, at around 150,000.=

More than 150,000 people packed Churchill Downs for the Kentucky derbies in May.

The Geico 500 In April at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama, 60,000 spectators gathered in the grandstands and the estimated total attendance was about 100,000.

Just over 71,400 fans attended Manchester City’s 1-0 win over Inter Milan in 2019 UEFA Champions League Final on June 10 in Istanbul, Türkiye.

those years NFC Championship According to data from Pro Football Reference, the Eagles tied with the San Francisco 49ers 69,979.

Just over 67,800 fans filled State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona NFL Super Bowl between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles, just under last year’s game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Los Angeles Rams (70,048).

Surprising fact

The NCAA college football championship game had a larger attendance than the Super Bowl or any NFL playoff game: 76,628 fans bought tickets to SoFi Stadium outside of Los Angeles to watch the Georgia Bulldogs’ 65-7 win over the Track Texas Christian University Horned Frogs.

Big number

630,000. That’s how many people bought tickets for this year’s French Open tennis grand slam in June, setting a record attendance at Roland Garros in Paris that just surpassed last year’s 613,000 tickets, according to tournament director Amelie Mauresmo. However, there were significantly fewer spectators at the individual games – Roland Garros has a capacity of just over 15,000 spectators.

further reading

Super Bowl tickets: $9,000 is average ticket price for the Chiefs-Eagles – second most expensive ever (Forbes)

Of record-breaking television, viewership and merchandise sales, the 2023 World Baseball Classic was a home run (Forbes)

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I’m a Boston-based reporter. Before joining Forbes, I covered the environment, local government and the arts for a small town newspaper in Nantucket. My previous work includes NPR, WBUR, WCAI and Nantucket Today. I am a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst with a degree in Political Science. Email me at [email protected]

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