Airshow Crowds

Hi all.

Many people say Airshows attract the second largest crowds (after Football) in the UK and that the majority of visitors.

Is this written any where, are there any reliable/quotable sources. If so, could somebody please point me in the right direction.

Cheers

Ben

I have a September 1953 press cutting that shows that over 1 million visitors (1,149,800 to be precise) visited RAF airfields for the September 1953 Battle of Britain diplays.

See below.

Sorry to bump this but I think I saw a figure of 51 pence as the average donation from the “great unwashed” at the Lowestoft Seafront Airshow a couple of years ago. And there’s the rub. If you’ve got a huge crowd of freeloaders, who’s paying the entertainers? I think they used to get an EC grant but that has been reduced. I suppose we pay through council tax but I don’t live in Lowestoft, Southend or Bournemouth so how does that work?

Accorfing to many I specialise more towards insultancy rather then consultency. Consultant often translates into Con trick when the so called experts just tell the clients what they want to know rather than what they need to know. Or am I just an old cynic………………..??????????????

The ADA-UK meering at Cranfield was most interesting and well worth attending. Even at the cost of a very early departure from home.

Lots of useful discussion which should lead to good things for the industry. No doubt Dick Roberts will be circulating some notes of the debate.

The RAF events team gave a gloomy outlook for the amount of service participation this season and the RAFAT MAC will have muddied the crystal ball. How that will affect things God knows.

Finally a change of staff on promotion coupled to recruitment procedures at the CAA airshow desk may mean delays in getting airshow permissions and exemptions until late in the season. Dave Evans has done an exceptional task for the industry for around 8 years but is moving to another department within the Belgrano. It will pay to get any application in very early. Late submissions may not be succesful.

Cheers,

Reaper 69
:diablo::diablo::cool::diablo::diablo:

Hi Skybolt I have seen the sea side crowd figures too, were you on the consultency site.

How was the symposium ? I could not get down to it.

Ben

The Air Display Association conducted a survey through its members around 10 years ago and this is the origin of the statement and claim. The claim is similar in the USA when airshows are compared with football (US style) , baseball, horse racing and golf. I forget which was the biggest over there.

Having looked down at the immense crowds at the freebie seaside airshows here I can well believe the UK industry claim.

It is the seaside events that are rapivly growing in popularity too. As a family day out they take some beating for overall value.

Cheers,

Reaper 69
:cool::cool::cool::cool:

As I understand it the idea of airshows being the second largest draw was dreamt up by an American promoter who was having difficulty “selling” his show. Moggy is quite right that horse-racing has a bigger draw and I wouldn’t be surprised if rugby (both codes, Union and League), cricket and motor -racing all have a much bigger paying attendance.

I don’t think 2 million spectators makes it anything like second after football. Nearly 5.9 million people attended horse racing meets in 2006 for instance

As always with statistics you have to be a little careful as you can be pretty sure almost the entire population of many seaside towns are lumped into the CAA figures on account of sea front displays. ‘Paying’ spectators might be a considerably smaller figure.

Moggy

Thank you both.

I was still searching 🙂

Ben

Would THIS be the one Neil?

It was a bit of a search on the CAA site to find it…..

Air displays are now one of the most popular
spectator events in the United Kingdom. On
average there are over 250 civil flying displays
each year attracting in excess of two million
spectators.

its on the CAA website under the display pilots section for one search for “guide to airdiplays”

Neil