PUKEKOHE

[ERC]

Sorry Carlo, your logic is somewhat flawed. Sure, Auckland has 40 times your population base, but it also has 50 times as many events and - even more options for the leisure dollar running at the same time as the Timaru area - and these do not have to be large events to suck away the potential either.
Pukekohe took over from Ardmore where they used to have massive crowds. Pre war Donington and Brooklands also had massive crowds, but in those days, the average family was starved of entertainment. Look at the programme for the late 1930's Donington meetings and it was pathetic - other than the silver Arrows, but there were coachloads and coachloads of spectators. Heck, we had no family car and used to catch an excursion coach to a bank holiday Mallory Park meeting and the crowds were huge in the late 1950s early 1960s.

Over the years, the crowds have dropped and dropped from tier one down, as families became more mobile and now mum has her own car, she no longer gets dragged to a race meeting. Unless something pretty drastic happens, attendances will continue to drop and one of the reasons is the tiny grids of Tier 1 cars, televised, as the supposed pinnacle of NZ racing. As I have posted on here many times before, race meetings now have to be self supporting from race entries.

If you'd care to provide attendance figures (if they are known - and I don't see turnstiles at NZ meetings doing a count) for say the top 10 meetings of the year at Timaru, maybe we can see how that stacks up, because I know for a fact that the majority of meetings at Pukekohe would have less than 1,000 paying spectators and at many, it isn't even worth putting anyone on the gate.