The last reported attendance was 192,922.
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Here’s something to pull at your heartstrings from Sebastian Aho in the Winter of 2025.
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That number comes from the Downtown Raleigh Alliance, and it’s just not possible to calculate attendance numbers down to the exact number. The Raleigh Police Department is the entity with the expertise in estimating crowd sizes and uses techniques accepted in the field. The fact that the RPD gives an estimate in place of false precision is evidence of its trustworthiness.
If the DRA’s number was lower than the RPD’s number, absolutely no one would be citing it. You should just trust the Raleigh Police Department on this one. They know what they’re doing.
the DRA used a data driven method to estimate attendance, but you go ahead and diminish the attendance. Why do you care? You weren’t even in the county.
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For those who weren’t there (including me) and a reminder for those who were.
Not sure if this same video was used for each game.
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If, a week ago, I had polled the crowd about what entity they’d ask to estimate a crowd size, everyone would have said the police department. People are citing the DRA’s only because it’s bigger, and people wish to believe that the crowd was bigger.
bruh, what data would the police have that is more accurate than cell phone data? they look at all the cameras and count everyone?
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Yes, police can and do look at images and make estimates (the key word here is “estimates”) based on the amount of space occupied and crowd density based on sampling. Other data can be and is used, including cell phone data.
The DRA (which, so far as I know, has never previously been in the business of estimating crowd sizes) claims that 192,922 people attended, based on cell phone data. But a significant portion of the crowd was small children, and children don’t carry cell phones. You can’t claim to know exactly how many people attended when by definition you have to make a best guess what portion of the crowd is children, and the cell phone data won’t tell you that. The DRA also says that 192,922 people “gathered in downtown,” which would be overly inclusive and sweep up a lot of people who were in downtown but not necessarily for the parade (if they worked at a local business or live nearby, for example). The cell phone data also can’t tell you who if the phone’s owner came for the parade or was nearby for other reasons. There is a reason you don’t recall seeing exact-number calculations like this for any other large gatherings.
Well, anyways
A “block” feature would be nice.
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Stop trying to convert a Baptist into a Catholic lol, it’s okay if @daviddonovan does not agree with many of us on this topic. Good discussions often come from disagreements. He’s not demeaning anyone or anything like half of the “popular” posters on here usually are.
Nonetheless, I understand his point given the context of a NC Legislature that has been incapable of passing a bill in 1-2 years has enough money dedicated for an MLB team/stadium but not our teachers.
Also, Charlotte the city with the most professional sports teams, doesn’t have an identity that’s easily identifiable. Durham seems to be the only major city in NC with a true identity that’s clearly know within and outside of the state. Raleigh needs a Raleigh titled team, projects like Big Jump, Oakline, and Dix to hone in the city of oaks brand.
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There is an Ignore feature. And my list is extensive.
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Let’s call the White House and ask. They always have the best crowd size estimates!
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That was awesome, thanks for posting
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huh? that’s like one of the biggest things they do.
let me introduce you to the state of downtown report 2017, the earliest i could find. the alliance itself was founded in 1996. feel free to go to the 2026 event this august and ask how they’ve refined their methodology over the last 10-30 years
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Oh, believe me, that comparison occurred to me immediately. And the analogy is even more spot-on since Trump’s crowd was actually quite small by inauguration standards, despite his insistence otherwise.
FWIW, I didn’t initially bring up either the crowd size or the DRA estimate. Some people want to cite the DRA number because it’s higher, then round up even higher for good measure because that wasn’t big enough, and insist the crowd was Yuge.
@wey I didn’t scour an 84-page doc, but the only crowd size estimate I saw was for the bluegrass festival, which was cited to another source, which is a sound methodology. The biggest annual event in Raleigh is the Christmas parade, and as best as I can tell, the DRA doesn’t estimate crowd sizes for that, which would seem like an obvious event for them to cover if that was “like one of the biggest things they do.” Also, if parades boost economic growth, why don’t we just throw more parades as a growth strategy? People love parades, especially children. Might as well throw more of them and let the money roll in.
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Sure. A parade celebrating a championship won by the area’s one local major professional team for the first time in 20 years - and a parade scheduled for a random Saturday in June “just because” are totally comparable and would have the same economic benefit as one another.
The only point that anyone has referenced was that this was a parade celebrating a singular achievement that was notable for the region and state - which brought a huge swath of people across Downtown Raleigh on what otherwise would have been a random weekend in June. I really don’t understand how anyone could possibly refute that the Canes parade provided an economic benefit for Downtown Raleigh unless they’re just trying to be a contrarian for some reason. The bars and restaurants along Fayetteville St and all its connecting streets were packed from the minute they opened, the hotels along the street had lines of cars from people checking in on Friday afternoon, etc.
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like every train seat in the state was sold out. i simply can’t understand david’s takes
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Look, I’m not the one who brought the parade into this, or the size of the crowd of the parade, or the alternative estimate of its size, and I really didn’t plan to get dragooned into debates about any of them. I didn’t bring up any of those things. The OP was about the economic impact of a hypothetical professional baseball team in Raleigh, and someone else thought a one-time parade for a hockey team was relevant to that.
Wake County alone produces $128.4 billion in economic output each year. 628,000 people work in Wake County, most of them year-round. The entire, year-round hospitality sector is only one small portion of that. Was it nice to have a big parade in Raleigh on an otherwise random Saturday in June? Sure. People love parades, me included, and it’s great that we had a parade and roughly 180,000 people showed up for it and had a lot of fun. Is the crowd that showed up for one random Saturday in June going to have any measurable impact at all on an economy that produces $128 billion a year? No, it will not.
Again, the OP was about a baseball team, not a parade, and I didn’t bring up the parade or its size or the DRA’s take on it and I truly didn’t come here to drag any of those things. And if baseball teams just showed up at no cost to the city, it would be fine that the economic impact of these things is negligible. But the state government just considered (and, thank goodness, rejected) a $1.7 billion taxpayer subsidy for a baseball stadium, so therefore it is important to remember that the economic return on these investments is negligible.
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The Chargrill on Hillsborough st recorded the largest day in sales in Chargrill history. That’s irrelevant though, I saw a study posted on CNBC about a hotdog stand outside the Cleveland Indians stadium that doesn’t do well.
I hope we apply this much scrutiny to the economic incentive packages we offer to corporations looking to locate here.
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11 paragraphs later, still arguing something? about parades.
Just let the parade be a cool thing that set a massive record for single crowd size in Raleigh (maybe NC?).
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