What one event took in the most money from face value ticket sales?

[Hampshire]

Is there on concert? One sporting event? One of something else that sets the record for biggest money draw through face value of ticket sales?

Would it be a packed house at Yankee stadium? The sell-out at the new Dallas Cowboy arena? The Daytona 500? A Madison Square Garden concert?
(It can’t be a total take over a number of shows. This is a one event, one sold out venue only.)

[Oakminster]

Did they sell tickets when the Pope did one of those mega-Mass events at a stadium? Otherwise, I’d guess one of the Superbowls holds the legit record.

WWE claims to have drawn 93,000 to the Silverdome for Wrestlemania III (Hogan/Andre), but that number is probably not accurate…

[Livardo]

This article says U2 broke the US attendance record and grossed 9.9 million. That same article says a Three Tennors 1996 performance netted $13 mil (and that’s the US record for $$)

Haven’t seen any world-wide figures

[Chez_Guevara]

This piece in the New York Times reports on the World Cup final held at the Pasadena Rose Bowl on 17 July 1994, like so:

Gate receipts for Sunday’s final, for which 94,194 spectators paid an average ticket price of $460, totaled $43.5 million, Rothenberg* said at a news conference today, adding that he thought the figure was a record for a single sporting event.

• Alan Rothenberg, chairman of World Cup USA '94.

I can find attendance figures for the three subsequent World Cup finals (Paris 1998 78,000, Yokohama 2002 69,029, Berlin 2006 69,000) but not the gate receipts for Paris or Berlin. I estimate the Yokohama final yielded $42.7 million at today’s exchange rates.

Any current football match gate receipts record might be at risk in South Africa next year, when the cost of a category ‘A’ ticket for the final will be $900.

[racer72]

The obvious answer is the Indy 500. Upwards of 350,000 fans, it is by far the largest one day sporting event in the world. They don’t release revenues but it would far exceed any ball sport. The only thing that may come close would be a large open air concert of some sort and even then you are looking at possible Woodstock type numbers to even approach Indy.

[Munch]

@racer72

The obvious answer is the Indy 500. Upwards of 350,000 fans, it is by far the largest one day sporting event in the world. They don’t release revenues but it would far exceed any ball sport. The only thing that may come close would be a large open air concert of some sort and even then you are looking at possible Woodstock type numbers to even approach Indy.

That’s what I came in to say. Infield tickets are only $20 each and account for a huge chunk of the sales, but the corporate tickets are ridiculously expensive.

I wonder if there’s an F1 race with similar attendance numbers that charges significantly more. I could see a race in Dubai costing exhorbitant sums of money for even the “cheap” seats.

[Aji_de_Gallina]

@Munch

That’s what I came in to say. Infield tickets are only $20 each and account for a huge chunk of the sales, but the corporate tickets are ridiculously expensive.

I wonder if there’s an F1 race with similar attendance numbers that charges significantly more. I could see a race in Dubai costing exhorbitant sums of money for even the “cheap” seats.

Altough 350,000 is a large number (possibly the largest) you have to look at ticket average. If the US final was 400 dollar with a quarter of people, you0d need an average of 130 do beat it.
Le Mans gets 250,000.
Silverstone was about 120,000
The Australian GP had a sunday crowd of 300,000, many F1 races go over 250,000.