Falling attendance: after Silverstone, numbers also down in Austria

Show on the track but less audience in the stands

While MotoGP continues to provide its fans with a splendid duel for the titlewith Pecco Bagnaia and Jorge Martin continuing to exchange the top spot in the world championship standings round after round, the last two races have seen a worrying data from the point of view of the public present on the track. After seeing more empty than full stands at Silverstone – where however in recent years the MotoGP has never managed to break through – The Red Bull Ring weekend also saw a drop in numbers.

The 173 thousand spectators of 2023 and the almost 168 thousand of 2022 have in fact transformed this year into approximately 150 thousand spectators who attended the entire weekend. drop of over 20 thousand units that several insiders have tried to interpret. Certainly the next rounds – Aragon and the two Misanos – could provide a more complete trend, also because they are events in Spain and Italy, the two countries where motorcycling is most at home.

Olympics or Ducati Cup factor?

On the platform Twitter/X colleague David Emmett tried to provide a particular explanation, hypothesizing a connection between the recent Paris Olympics, which ended on August 12, and the drop in spectators in these last competitions. His suggestion is that some sports fans who had previously followed the MotoGP live may have preferred to ‘divert’ their savings to the Games this year, which have returned to Europe for the first time since 2012.

This is a possibility, although difficult to prove, but certainly not the only one on the table: the Ducati’s clear supremacy over the competition – even more evident this year than in the last two seasons – may have had an impact, as well as (in reference to the Austrian round) the new track conformation with the chicane introduced to slow down the approach to turn 3 which in recent years has increased safety but at the same time reduced the possibility of overtaking. Whatever the final reason, the hope is that in the next races the public will return to crowd the stands of the racetracks in greater numbers, giving this rush the championship finale is the setting it deserves.