24 Hours of Le Mans 240,000 spectators!

[Editors Note: The Indy 500 used to be the biggest sporting event in the world. That was until Tony George created the IRL and turned IndyCar racing into a shadow of its former self. Now LeMans dwarfs it] Thank you to all our spectators. They numbered more than 240,000 within the circuit for this 80th edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Nevertheless, compared to 2011, this represents a small reduction for the Automobile Club de l’Ouest as there were 249,500 spectators on that occasion.

For the record, the Automobile Club de l’Ouest sold 238,150 entry tickets in 2010 and 230,000 in 2009.

There are likely to be several reasons for this reduction: the economic pressure on households, competing political and sporting events, uncertain weather forecast.

It is still very much the 24 Hours of Le Mans we know, a real success with its recent developments in new media. WebTV was specially launched for this week, there were more than 3,184,000 page views (numbers as of 1500 hours on 17th June), the Facebook page for the 24 Hours of Le Mans (cars and bikes) this weekend surpassed the 100,000 barrier – Facebook: 24 Hours of Le Mans – ACO Official. Twenty-five thousand followed our information on Twitter @24hoursoflemans (more than 8,000 new followers this weekend) thanks to #24LM, and the www.lemans.org site – the most comprehensive regarding the world of endurance racing – continues to progress in a spectacular manner.

Thanks you to all our fans who thus came to enjoy this magnificent 80th edition of the race.

So goodbye until we meet again in June 2013 to commemorate the 90 years of a race which dates back to 1923