Storied Central Park Concert Crowds Were Simply Made Up

If you were wondering why the crowd at the free Bon Jovi concert in Central Park was numbered at a measly 48,538 people when previous concerts by entertainers like Garth Brooks reportedly drew 750,000, former city parks administrator Doug Blonsky is here to tell you that those old numbers were totally bogus. “You would get in a room with the producer, with a police official, and a person from parks, and someone would say, ‘What does it look like to you?’ The producer would say, ‘I need it to be higher than the last one.’ That’s the kind of science that went into it.” The Times has more on how they come up with the numbers these days.

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By John Del Signore in Arts & Entertainment on July 24, 2008 2:42 PM

Comments [rss]

dan_greenberg1500

I was at that Garth Brooks concert and the one thing that I remember is leaving and trying to catch a subway back to downtown. They had every freakin' station closed due to capacity. So those numbers may be spiked, but there was a TON of people there.

Rocknrope

Garth who?

blablanyc

I have an idea. Since most people carry cell phones and mobile carriers can tell where you are at all times, why don't we just ask the mobile carriers how many people were in the area at the time? Why not?

blablanyc

Really? You mean to tell me Garth Brooks didn't draw 750,000 fans in NYC? I'm shocked.

heythere

There have been many huge concerts at the park. Paul Simon, Garth etc etc.

Who knows how much they got?

Just take a look at some of the crowd shots, there must be hundreds and thousands of people at least at some of the larger ones.

Heck, Garth's concert basically had the whole meadow full.

It reminded me of some of the huge concerts in Hyde park in London.

I guess to get an exact number you would have to print out tickets or something.

Tgirl

Garth's gigantic ego superseeded the crowd size

matty

This is an interesting article.

The taste of Chicago attracts "millions" of visitors over the course of the week but I guess I have no idea how many 1 million people actually is.

Peter

Skeptical of the gargantuan attendance claims for Pasadena's annual Tournament of Roses parade, some researchers estimated the square footage available for spectators along the parade route, crunched some numbers, and determined that if the claimed numbers actually did show up for the parade it would be the most tragic disaster in American history. Tens of thousands of people would die from crushing and suffocation.

dimshine

shocking that the cops wouldn't put effort into their jobs like that, isn't like them at all...

SP

Seriously. Thats fucking ridiculous. The entire population of Manhattan is only 1.5 million. You couldn't fit half the people here on the great lawn. Completely idiotic.