What was the biggest crowd ever for an event in Australia?
David W asked:
World Youth Day in Sydney will have about 500,000 people attending. What was the biggest crowd ever that attended any event (sporting, eg. Olympics, or business, or religious, or other)? In other words, what was the biggest gathering of people in Australia for a single event.
World Youth Day in Sydney will have about 500,000 people attending. What was the biggest crowd ever that attended any event (sporting, eg. Olympics, or business, or religious, or other)? In other words, what was the biggest gathering of people in Australia for a single event.
The highest attendance ever recorded [at Stadium Australia] was 114,714 during the Closing Ceremony of the 2000 Summer Olympics.
This I believe is the largest crowd for a sporting event in Australia.
There are street events which are free that merely carry “estimated’ attendances in very generalized figures.
Those reporting include people standing around or nearby the Sydney harbour or along the banks of the Yarra River in Melbourne at the time of the event.
Sometimes these have been for New Years celebrations, or for the parade of the Moomba festival in Melbourne, and the estimates have been in the vicinity of a few 100,000 people.
However, in a proper contained arena where the gate tickets were counted precisely, the record for any sports’ event is at the MCG in Melbourne, where a record Australian football Grand final attendance in 1970 of 121,696 saw Carlton beat Collingwood by 10 points in the AFL Grand Final.
The only other known greater crowd than this was in 1959, at the same venue, when the ’spectators’ were allowed to ’spill out’ onto the oval for the final day (a Sunday) of the Christian, Billy Graham Crusade - wherein a record crowd [of which I was but one] of 144,000 people witnessed this great event.
[Although as I check Wikipedia now I see that they are claiming only 130,000 as being in attendance on that day, but it is still recognized as the official record crowd.]
At the time of this achievement, the newspapers reported that nowhere had a such an Australian crowd been seen - not even for the Queen.