Mix of fans and attendance

[kel176506]

Interested to know if anyone has insight on this or the data behind it; What is the total attendance and mix of fans that attend the Le Mans 24hr? Do the marques and the drivers that are participating in the race have an influence on the total fans and the mix of the country they originate from?

I think i remember hearing on Radio Le Mans and the highlight DVDs that the 24hr has an average of 250k fans attend annually. Wikipedia suggests 2019 had 252,500 (not sure how accurate this is).

The bit that i am interested in is if anyone knows the split of this attendance based on country. I assume the French are the biggest proportion of this total but what do the other countries account for?

Did Jaguar in the 1980’s increase Brit attendance?
Did Ford returning in 2016 spike American fan attendance?
Did Alonso racing for outright victory in the 2018 Toyota mean more overall motorsport fans attended?
For the future; Porsche have a consistent record but will Hypercars in 2023 result in more German or Porsche fans?

[FredericRobinson]

Jaguar definitely increased British attendance in the 80's, there are plenty of Brits going now who started with the Jags.
Don't think there was much of an increase of US fans with Ford, but then they're a very small proportion anyway.
Ths attendance in 2018 was well down on what it had been 3 or 4 years earlier when there was a better overall battle, Alonso might have stopped the numbers slipping further though, not that the official figures reflected that, they can be taken with a pinch of salt, they're also a total for the event, with lots of people being counted more than once, I don't believe for a second they sell 250, 000 individual tickets.

[FARP]

Totally agree that seeing the Silk Cut Jaguar XJR-9 in 1988 at the 1000km of Brands Hatch was enough to spark the flame of going to Le Mans. Had to wait a while before going to my first race in 2000, since then I’ve been every year.

[Truckosaurus]

Danish attendence certainly skyrocketed during the Tom Kristensen era.

[LawrieC]

I totally agree with the comments about Jaguar and Tom Christensen. Jan Lammers' Racing for Holland team certainly encouraged the Dutch, but you might only be looking at a few thousand people - its so difficult to tell. There have been a few Americans, but Le Mans is difficult for anyone flying in, so the numbers are limited.

Its been said that there have been up to 50,000 Brits, and probably a similar number from Germany, so add in the Dutch and Danes, plus a few Belgians and other Europeans (the Italians are noticeable by their absence) and you have to assume that at least half of the spectators are French.

Having said that, its so big, you only see a small corner of whats happening

[Truckosaurus]

I always think that you don't get huge numbers of Germans, might that be because the N24 occurs around the same time of year and they consider that 'their' race?

I suspect the lack of a Ferrari contending for an overall win since the '70s (60s?) is something that keeps LM off the Italian radar.