FIRST PERSON/OPINION
By John Ulrich
MotoAmerica plans to run its featured Superbike and Supersport classes as support races during the 2015 MotoGP weekends at Circuit Of The Americas and Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Looking at claimed attendance figures for those two events in 2014, that’s a very good thing for the teams and riders planning on racing in the new 2015 MotoAmerica AMA/FIM North American Motorcycle Road Racing Series.
The 2014 numbers also show that if a motorcycle road racing event is run right and promoted right, it can attract a good crowd of American fans, regardless of what various now-former race series administrators claimed to explain-away declining spectator counts and TV audiences for DMG-run AMA Pro events during recent years.
More, from a press release issued by MotoGP:
Crowds grow as MotoGP™ pulls in close to 2.5 million fans at 2014 Grands Prix
Another superb season of Grand Prix racing saw MotoG crowds grow compared to last year, with 2.47 million fans attending GP events in 2014.
Looking at the attendance figures across the 18 rounds of this year’s championship 14 of the Grands Prix on the 2014 calendar saw more than 100,000 spectators in attendance over the course of the weekend. Those events were held at Austin, Termas de Rio Hondo (Argentina), Jerez, Le Mans, Mugello, Catalunya, Assen, Sachsenring, Indianapolis, Brno, Silverstone, Aragon, Sepang and Valencia.
Indeed, the aforementioned new Grand Prix on the 2014 schedule, the Gran Premio Red Bull de la Republica Argentina at the new Termas de Rio Hondo track, pulled in more than 125,000 spectators over the three days of the GP weekend. MotoGP fans from across the continent flocked to the track, as Grand Prix racing returned to South America for the first time in ten years.
The biggest crowds of the year were at Brno as a huge total of 240,695 fans were present at the bwin Grand Prix Ceské republiky from Friday to Sunday, with more than 138,000 present on race day alone. The total crowd for the Brno weekend of over 240,000 spectators was a significant increase on the figure of 222,710 for the event in 2013.
The 2014 events at Jerez and Sachsenring also saw crowd numbers for the Grand Prix weekend exceed the 200,000 mark.
With total crowds exceeding well over two million for the tenth successive season the total attendance at all Grands Prix in 2014 was 2,473,624, compared with 2,433,763 in 2013.
See the figures per event in the table below.
QATAR- Losail 17,890
USA – Austin 118,918
ARGENTINA – Termas de Rio Hondo 125,961
SPAIN – Jerez 229,416
FRANCE – Le Mans 178,073
ITALY – Mugello 111,309
SPAIN – Barcelona-Catalunya 163,045
NETHERLANDS – TT Circuit Assen 131,000
GERMANY – Sachsenring 209,408
USA – Indianapolis 132,817
CZECH REPUBLIC – Brno 240,695
UK – Silverstone 138,000
SAN MARINO – Misano 88,665
SPAIN – MotorLand Aragon 112,331
JAPAN – Twin Ring Motegi 70,271
AUSTRALIA – Phillip Island 77,900
MALAYSIA – Sepang 130,925
SPAIN – Valencia, Ricardo Tormo 197,000
Total 2,473,624