OK.  All you have to do is bring Racetracks and Speedways into the mix and this article looks really dumb.  Why?  Well most of these tracks are bigger than 150,000 for attendance.  However for the purpose of this article, I want to bring up significant crowds at stadiums that were well at or exceeded capacity.

It gives you a sense of how monumental these events must have been.  I mean when you have an event where the most a stadium can fill is 200,000 seats yet 400,000 people were there, you know it’s gotta be something special.

Here are some sporting events where the attendance was well over capacity

2004 Red Sox Crowd

If you choose to count it as a sports event,  the Red Sox 2004 victory parade attracted over 3 million people.

2004 Indianapolis 500

It is estimated that if the race sold out there would be a maximum of 267, 925 fans.  However, in 2004, if you include the infield, over 400,000 screaming fans (mostly rednecks) were there.

2007 Daytona 500

If you include the infield you’re looking at over 250,000 that showed.

Tokyo Racecourse – 1990 Nippon Derby

That day, over 196,000 people showed up for the race.

The Maracanã stadium, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, 1950

The place of the 1950 Brazil vs. England World Cup game.  What was incredible about the game was the amount of people that watched it.  An astonishing 199,854 fans crammed into the stadium, which is still the biggest soccer attendance of all time

The Rungnado May Day Stadium, Pyongyang, North Korea

The biggest ever attendance was for a wrestling event in 1995, where a scarcely believable 190,000 grappling aficionados piled through the gates to watch some obscure Japanese C-grade wrestlers in action.

Churchill Downs

Though the stadium only has a capacity of 51,000, over 165,000 are usually in attendance every year.

Michigan Stadium

The largest crowd in NCAA college football history was 112,118 on November 22, 2003 for a game against Ohio State

The Telstra Stadium, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

League’s finest hour came in 1999 when Melbourne Storm beat the St George Illawarra Dragons to win the NRL Grand Final. 107,558 fans were packed in.