Supercars has reported a record crowd for the 2023 Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500.
According to the championship, the weekend attendance figure was 201,971, pipping the figure for the event’s return to the calendar last year by just under 2000 people.
Those record crowd numbers do, of course, pertain to the event’s Supercars-only era, which began in 2009, with the championship taking over promotion in 2012.
The record for the Gold Coast Indy era is 309,184 over the four days of action which were put on back in 2004, when the homegrown V8 touring cars shared billing with the Champ Car World Series.
Nevertheless, the result is another strong one for Supercars, coming straight off the back of the third-highest ever attendance for the Repco Bathurst 1000.
“We couldn’t be happier, breaking the record from last year, which was massive, and doing it again,” Gold Coast 500 Event Manager Matt Ramsden told media today.
“We’ve had nothing but great feedback from all our food vendors, our bars, we’re doing record trade.
“All of our punters, all of our crowds seem very happy with the with the success of the weekend and hopefully it set us up for another record year in 2024.
“We’ve already started planning on new ideas, improvements, refining the event, so we’re really looking forward to just getting stuck into next year.
“It’ll come out in debriefs, but we’re looking at refinements to our Club 500 area, our concerts, potentially looking at new acts, things like that; just improvements that we can generally make across the board so we can continually improve the event year on year.”
Sunday race winner David Reynolds heaped praise on the event.
“Gold Coast race is by far the best event of our calendar year,” declared the Penrite Racing driver.
“It’s the most fun, it’s the most colourful, the loudest, there’s so much track action…
“They put on the best show here at the Gold Coast and it’s my favourite event of the year by far.”
The results comes after Boost Mobile founder Peter Adderton promised big about the event which he sponsors when he spoke on the Speedcafe Podcast in the fortnight leading up to the Gold Coast 500.
“Whatever we do, we do it well, and we try to up it, and we’re going to try again,” said Adderton.
“We’re going to go hopefully one step further, and really start to put our stamp on ‘this is how an event should be operated and run.’”
The final event on the 2023 Supercars calendar, the Vailo Adelaide 500, is highly likely to also crack 200,000 total attendance when it takes place on November 23-26.
Last year, when it also returned to the calendar, it drew a four-day crowd of 258,200, beating a target set by the event’s saviour, Premier Peter Malinauskas, of a quarter of a million people.
The 2024 Gold Coast 500 will take place on October 25-27.
