Just catching up and I thought I would look at some numbers to prove/disprove that airshows attract more paying spectators than football. Well, according to my Sunday paper 651,681 spectators attended Saturday’ s matches in the four top divisions. Add on another 50K for the Conference and non-league games and a total of 700,000 could be about right. As for airshows, Duxford pulls in about 15,000 per day so 60,000. RIAT maybe 100,000 and 3 seaside shows perhaps 100,000 each (though how many pay is another question). If the airshow season is 30 weeks long and 10,000 at a show somewhere every weekend that all rolls up to a total of about 760.000. So the football crowd per weekend is roughly equal to a whole season’s airshow attendance and bear in mind the football season is 40 weeks long. I read somewhere that the original quote about airshow attendances being second only to football was dreamed up by an American promoter who was desperate to get the crowds in to his show. If anybody can be bothered to dig out the figures I could imagine that cricket, horse racing, motor racing and both codes of rugby would give airshows a run for their money.
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