Belmont Stakes crowd capped at 90,000 by NYRA

[GenuineRisk]

Originally Posted by joeydb

Now this question is no longer academic: What will they do? Literally turn people away?

The Derby had a record crowd of 170,000 plus this year. The preakness had another record of 131,680 - admittedly the infield partiers made up a good chunk of that.

How are they expecting to gracefully taper the expressed interest, even before we knew we had a triple crown try on the line, down to 90,000?

Judging from the most previous TC years, they'll be turning away somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000. Smarty Jones' year was an aberration because the horse was from a city less than 2 hours from NYC.

I initially thought it was NYRA being cheap and just not wanting to pay for the staff and things necessary to handle 100,000+ but now I think it's a smart move for overall attendance- every year more people will be more likely to buy a ticket to make sure they don't get shut out (I bought a reserved seat in April because last year was such a nightmare), and then, if the Derby winner loses the Preakness, they will still go to Belmont because they paid for the ticket. Union Rags' Belmont had 85,000, but only because I'll Have Another scratched the Friday before the race. If he'd not been entered, or scratched a week after the Preakness I imagine it would have been about 45,000-50,000.

I'll miss the 45,000 Belmonts, though.

(Note: Union Rags' Belmont was a lovely day of racing; I have no complaints)