wait, what? it wasn't filled to capacity but there were definitely more than 85k there
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Guinness certifies much lower Big Chill attendance
Yes, 451 more.
slow their Guiness intake while counting. Don't blame them for slamming Guiness but damn 85K!
Mmmmmm
Brilliant!
It was packed around us in section 19. No way there were 113,411...but certainly more than 85,451
At least they left the 1 on the end.
It seems like we exaggerate our attendance a lot. I can remember rainy games against Eastern and the likes when the attendance on the scoreboard read well over 100,000 even with an empty student section.
But no matter what, we'll always have the most people watching a college football game anywhere in America today.
I probably does, just like everyone else's attendance exaggerates. The accepted practice is to count tickets sold as attendance, not gate attendance. That's why you get numbers like that for rainy cupcake games. There is just no way that the actual attendance was that low, though, unless our attendance is always much, much lower than the reported total, which I don't believe.
I mean, I understand not counting any of the MSU players since they never showed up, but that doesn't make up for such a drastic change
does not include media personnel, players, concession workers, etc....Guinness is only counting spectators.
So this number will go up if you take those people into account or not
But I would think the attendance was closer to something like 100,000 based on what I saw in the stadium. There were a few empty areas here and there, but it had to be over that official number Guinness gave. Media personnel, players, concession workers, etc don't add up to 10-20K do they?
EDIT: I'm also curious as to if Guinness considered the spectators in the luxury boxes. I remember reading that they were doing a count based on pictures for a good basis of their number (along with other things?), but I don't recall hearing about spectators counted in luxury boxes. I'd be surprised if they missed something like that, though.
Attendance is counted by how many tickets are sold, not how many people are in the stadium.
hence the term in attendance
I don't think that's right, even for normal "today's attendance" total purposes.
To take our team as an example, Michigan sells out every game but has different attendance totals each week. Michigan's attendance totals often exceed the total number of tickets because others are counted.
We use a combination of the two. Paid attendance plus invited guests. It's a "best of both worlds" kind of thing.
Plus, I would imagine they also include standing room tickets sold at the gate (if any are), which mean that they take the total attendance to be: tickets sold + invited guests + standing room gate tickets.
Attendance includes more than the tickets scanned at the gate. It includes staff, the bands, etc.
They're in the stadium? They're in attendance. Most stadiums / venues do this sort of thing.
Having said that, 85K seems low, even on scanned tickets. Do the people in the suites not have to have tickets scanned?
My section was not at all packed... In fact, most of the row behind us was empty and we were taking up well more than our little space alloted by the numbers on the bleachers.
85K sounds right.
8k more than US/Germany and 10k over Sparty's unofficial "record"
I'm gonna say they took attendance from the pictures after all the frat guys left in the second and third periods. I was in section 31, and that place got empty near the end.
Who did we have doing the counting anyways? Laid off census takers?
Let's see....1, 2, 4, 7, 13, 14, 22, 29, 39, 100!
I'm done.
The University announced an unofficial crowd of 113,411 during the third period. To better the GWR mark of 77,803 set at this year’s IIHF World Championships, however, it was necessary to provide scanned evidence of the bar codes on each spectator's ticket. At the time of the announcement, 85,451 tickets had been scanned, with the numbers continuing to increase, but more than enough to certify a new record
While we still await final documention to award an official final number, the spectacle of the event can’t be denied
Did Giant Curly Fries scan a ticket to get in? That would ruin my day if I knew he wasn't officially there..
Tickets were still being scanned in the third period? That seems odd. Or does it take awhile for the scanners to add up their totals?
I guess another question is do all the extraneous 'spectators' (media, band members, zamboni drivers, fireworks crew, bomber pilots, etc.) have some sort of scannable ticket? Or are they just on a list that the university provides. Which wouldn't be very easy for Guinness to certify...
But it was clear from an annarbor.com story from Dec. 11 that Guinness is planning to add some of those people to the count later. The media won't be included because Guinness doesn't consider them "spectators."
This was the explanation given for the difference between the Michigan and Guinness attendance figures:
The reason for the discrepancy comes because of Guinness counts differently than Michigan counts. The school counts players, media and others at the game to work. Guinness doesn’t count any of those people.
"It's a combination of scans with the barcodes on tickets," [Guinness representative Mike] Janela said, explaining how Guinness reaches its number. "It's not for tickets sold but for people who actually show up. People who weren’t ticketed, marching band for instance, or people who were given special passes."
Media and players, he said, do not count in the numbers because they are not actually spectators of the game.
Here's a link to the Guinness web site item noted above: Highest ice hockey game attendance
To echo what others have said here, that 85,451 figure is not going to be Guinness's final tally. They needed to come up with a figure during the game in order to certify the world record and make the presentation. The final number will come later and will include additional scanned tickets, plus other people in attendance who Guinness counts as spectators but who didn't have tickets--for example, marching band members and people who attended with special passes.
the north endzone was empty for much of the game, and chunks of the MSU section were empty until the end of the first period.
but the question in my mind is whether they counted people in the stands or counted tickets that were used at the gate. if the former, i bet it's super accurate. if the latter, it's gotta be low as some people come late and leave early.
What game were you at? The north end zone was not "empty" for the much of the game. Empty seats here and there? Sure. But "empty?" No way.
I will say there appeared to be a bunch of empty seats up in the boxes and club seats.
the upper half of it was 75% empty for most of the first period. it seemed to fill in during the second but never the top few rows. i also noticed during the fireworks that the middle sections were ~80% empty all the way up, but that was probably because of smoke from the fireworks.
is that precise enough for you?
I don't buy that we had 113,411, but we definitely had more than 100,000. Most of the spots of the stadium that were empty at the end of the game did, at some point, have people in them. There were stragglers who showed up near the end of the 1st period, and then again a bunch of people who left after the second period because they were pretty sure we were going to win and don't actually care that much about hockey. No way that at least 110,000 didn't show up, have their ticket scanned, and go into the stadium for at least a period at some point.
THe stadium looked filled. Not "packed" but filled. I would have easily said at least around 100,000.
Agreed. There had to have been AT LEAST 100,000 in in there halfway through the game.
I understand not counting players, coaches, media, and stadium staff, but does that group really account for the 28,000-people discrepancy? Wow.
We need to revise our own figure. If Guiness's final figure is below 100K, we can't plausibly argue that a stadium record was set. We did not have over 15,000 non-paying guests at the game.
There is absolutely no way the Big Chill was even at 100,000. I've been saying this all week to much negging, but the Michigan Athletic Department used several very underhanded methods for counting "attendance" including:
1. Forcibly giving away tickets to people who did not want or request them (and thus did not attend) but counting them as attendance since a ticket was "sold" for the price of $0.
2. Giving some individual students 2 tickets and counting their attendance twice.
Of course this post will get negged because it takes a negative view at a legitimate problem with the Michigan athletics department and the "feel good" story of the Big Chill, but the bottom line is that the AD completely scammed the system in order to accomplish its goal and its preposterous to think that the Big Chill had anywhere close to the attendance of almost any of the football games this season.
The bottom line is that the Big Chill was definitely a hockey attendance record, but if you believe the Big Chill had anywhere close to the attendance to break the Michigan Stadium attendance record I know a few Nigerian Princes with some business propositions for you.
EDIT: Agreeing with the poster above me. I was using "you" in the general sense, not specifically toward the poster above.
People weren't forcibly given tickets.
The default option on the student season ticket package included a Big Chill ticket. Students could have changed this to zero if they didn't want it.
Now, many students didn't realize this. It was a combination of both the AD making the default option to be 1 Big Chill ticket (maybe a poor assumption, but whatever) and students reading very poorly.
As a result, people who thought 1 ticket was not included by default ordered another, thinking it was their first.
There was a story about this a while ago and the AD acknowledged they did not make it as clear as they should have. However, I had no trouble figuring out the purchase, and other students with common sense and reading ability should have been able to figure it out as well.
Inertia is a powerful influence. If the price of the Big Chill ticket is $0, and its already coming anyway, most people wont bother to uncheck it. It's the same reason why when opting into 401k became the default at many work places, the number of people who opted-in for a 401k drastically rose. Same logic, except the Big Chill free ticket is much less important than deciding a retirement plan so if anything the effect of inertia is much greater. I personally didn't uncheck the box and received a Big Chill ticket, which doesn't really bother me since getting free stuff is not a hassle. I just find it kind of low that the Michigan AD is now going to count me as "in attendance" for the Big Chill just because I had a free ticket.
With regard to the multiple ticket thing, I wasn't talking about buying a 2nd ticket because you didn't realize you already got one. I was talking about the fact that if one individual bought football season tickets and hockey season tickets, they got a Big Chill ticket in each season package. Thus, the school counted that one student as "two" in attendance without knowing whether the 2nd ticket would just go to waste on not (this assumes 100% of people with hockey season ticket packages were interested in attending, which isnt quite true due to illnesses or people out of town interviewing for jobs, etc.)
The thing people aren't considering is that while sections looked filled, it is far more likely that people gave themselves some extra space and were slightly more spread out than they would be if the section really was filled.
If there are normally 26 seats in a row, there might have only been 22 people in that row and you would not be able to tell the difference from a distance.
Those numbers quickly add up.
I'd wager quite a bit that there weren't many people standing sideways at the game...
I have to agree with you.
Where I was sitting, some rows were completely packed (the row in fornt of me, someone couldn't fit into their sat, so they moved a couple of rows), and my row had 3-4 people missing, so we all spread out. It was DEFINITELY not as squished as UCONN or MSU football games this year.
Depends on where you were sitting, a lot of people who had tickets in the end zone area walked over to the sideline view seats. I was row 60 15 yard line and we were all standing sideways. The number is probably somewhere in between the two but 85K sounds really low.
And if you think the student section was anywhere close to capacity, well... yeah. The lower rows of the student section are always full. The upper half (not 1/5 or few rows, half) was pretty roomy, which is not usually true. I was able to stretch out with ease in row 40. Not at all usually the case.
Regardless, I was referring to other sections. The non-student sections were pretty sparse with only 15 minutes left before game time. They're usually full by then. I'm guessing many rows of those non-student sections had the appearence of being full when in reality people were just a bit spread out and gave the impression of it being full.
I don't really know why there's an argument. Guiness counted the number of tickets scanned at 85K. How can that be wrong?
Hold the phones:
mikerothstein On the 85,451 Guinness number from the Big Chill, that is a mid-second period number to verify a record. Not the final tally from Guinness
Guiness broke the record for most mistakes counting to 113,411.
Congrats to Guiness!
Read http://community.guinnessworldrecords.com/_Highest-ice-hockey-game-attendance/BLOG/3099369/7691.html
The University announced an unofficial crowd of 113,411 during the third period. To better the GWR mark of 77,803 set at this year’s IIHF World Championships, however, it was necessary to provide scanned evidence of the bar codes on each spectator's ticket. At the time of the announcement, 85,451 tickets had been scanned, with the numbers continuing to increase, but more than enough to certify a new record.
While we still await final documention to award an official final number, the spectacle of the event can’t be denied.
85,451 is just how many scanned bar codes had been counted by the time of the on-field announcement, not the final certified number.
Attendance count..... READY??
1..2....3....4.....5.......1000......20000.......85451
We want mooooooooore..............
I think attendance peaked somewhere near the end of the first period/beginning of second. The north endzone was slow to fill up, but for a brief period of time it did appear full. There was definitely not 113,000 in the stands, but I think 85,000 was low. How are they going to account for people in the box seats if they use aerial photos?
We can always surpass this years number with another game. That shouldn't be hard to do.
that the FINAL SCORE WAS MEEEECHIGAN 5, MSWho ZERO!
Homer: Marge! How many kids do we have? Oh, no time to count, I'll just estimate! Uh... nine!
Marge: Homer, you know we don't h--
Homer: Shut up, shut up! If I don't hear you it's not illegal! OK, I need
some deductions, deductions... ah!! Business gifts!
[Homer grabs the boat painting from above the couch and hands it to
Marge.]
Here you go, keep using nuclear power!
Marge: Homer! I painted that for you!
Homer: OK, Marge, if anyone asks, you require twenty four hour nursing care, Lisa's a clergyman, Maggie is seven people, and Bart was wounded in Vietnam!
Bart: Cool!
Unreal. The only empty areas were towards the top and thats because everyone tried to get a few rows closer. That game was more crowded than any football game I was at this year (except maybe MSU). If this is the real count then every stadium in the SEC only holds 40,000.
Jeff Arnold has a new story up at annarbor.com confirming that the 85,451 figure is only a "base number" and that the final figure won't be available "for some time":
The base number [Guinness] is working with is 85,451, which is how many tickets were scanned by the third period of the Michigan hockey team's 5-0 victory over Michigan State.
Guinness uses a different system of calculating attendance than the NCAA. Guinness adjudicator Mike Janela said Saturday that Guinness relies on the number of tickets scanned on the day of event rather than tickets sold.
...
Guinness officials also have a list of non-ticket holders who count toward the record. Media members, marching band musicians and other people attending the event are not added into the finally tally.
Michigan relies on the number of tickets sold for an event and then includes media members, stadium workers and other people present for a game to reach an attendance mark. The announced crowd of 113,411 is considered the largest crowd to witness an event at Michigan Stadium, which also holds the NCAA record for attendance at a sporting event.
The official said Guinness will continue to work with Michigan officials in establishing a final number, but that it would not become available for some time.
It does look pretty full in those photos - but people are also wearing winter coats, which take up a little more space. People in the lower photo don't seem as shoehorned in as they are for a football game.
>>winter coats, which take up a little more space
Come on.
Maybe it serves as motivation to do better in four years and break our own record or go for six digits.
who cares what the exact number is as long as we set the record? jebus
Free Press has an updated article suggesting another explanation for at least part of the discrepancy: Not everyone with a ticket had their ticket scanned--some had their tickets torn. The latter wouldn't have been included in the preliminary Guinness count, which was scanned tickets only. Don't know how many of those there might be, but it appears they might be included in Guinness's final count:
"We will continue to work with Guinness to identify the exact number of people that went through the scanners and those who had their tickets torn," said Matt Trevor, assistant media relations director for U-M hockey. "We knew we would end up with two different numbers because of different standards used."
Trevor said Guinness doesn't count those who were working the game, including media, staff and concession workers. Michigan does include those people in its attendance figure.
Detroit News article from last night has some different quotes from Guinness record manager Mike Janela with a couple new points: (1) could be a couple more weeks before Guinness releases its final tally; (2) the preliminary total of 85,451 did not even include all scanned tickets:
"We are still awaiting further information, such as verified lists of other eligible, non-ticketed spectators such as the marching bands and special guests of the university," Janela said. "As such, we do not have a final official number yet and, unfortunately, may not for a couple more weeks as we await everything."
...
"In order to make an announcement during the game, we had to go at the time with the number which was most recent before the certificate presentation," Janela said. "At the time, this was 85,451, and was more than enough to at least certify that the previous record had already been broken by that point. However, the ticket scans were still coming in all throughout the third period and after the game."
So between additional scanned tickets, tickets that were torn instead of scanned, and "non-ticketed spectators" the final, official tally has the potential to be much higher.
The official stadium capacity is 109,901 - so anytime the attendance is over that you know they count staff and so on.
As several have pointed out the 85k number was the number of scanned tickets at the 2nd period. The university regularly counts stadium staff, the band, etc. in the attendance. Most venues include staff and so on in attendance numbers.
The story I heard is that they started tearing tix instead of scanning to speed things up because the late arriving crowd caused backups at the turnstiles. That sounds like a plausible explanation and if they saved the stubs, we should be able to get an accurate count. Come to think of it, can't they just count the number of turns on the turnstiles?