The Wrestlemania 3 Attendance Mystery

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The popular theory is that Wrestlemania 3, which was held at the Pontiac Silverdome in Detroit, Michigan had an indoor attendance record of 93,173. Atleast this is what the WWE claims and always had, to this day.

There has been a ton of controversy over the years about whether this figure is accurate or not, the most well known probably being Dave Meltzer reporting that they were off by quite a few thousand.

Well ladies and gentlemen, I'm here to solve that mystery and rouse up debate about it.

The MAXIMUM capacity of the Pontiac Silverdome is only 80,311 seats.

That is taken directly from the Silverdome's Wikipedia page and from every single page I've seen about the Silverdome, it always lists the max capacity of 80,300 roughly.

So, lets hear some debate! Anyone else pissed that the WWE lied to us and magically added over 13,000 people to that number? In fact, this kind of dashes the idea that this was the all time indoor attendance record, as both the Who and Led Zeppelin filled up the arena completely as well in the 70s.

So, lets hear some debate! Did the WWE lie? If so, why do you think? If not, what's your defense? Debate people, debate!

Sources
Pontiac Silverdome [Wikipedia]
Pontiac Silverdome [The Stadium Guide]
 
They might have lied and wanted people to think there were more people there than there actually were. But WWE doesnt need to lie, even back then. sit if max capacity is 80,311 seats and WWE claims 93,173 people were there, WWE must be lying, although I hate to say it. Thanks for posting this, all of the McMahon and draft posts were annoying.
 
You guys obviously didnt think this through. You didnt consider the floor and riser seats! The football capacity was 80,000 something, but the wrestling capacity is larger. the football field eliminates a whole bunch of seats that the WWE shows can still use. So the WWE did not lie, at least thats my observation on it.
 
Well truth be told the Pontiac dome did hold 80,000 but that was for foot ball games and a football field covers the entire floor area of the stadium. So they could easily fit 13,000 more on the staidum's field as back in 1985 they had a ring and a walkway not that long entrance ramps that they have nowadays. So i belive WWE back then as The largest crowd to ever gather at the Silverdome for an event was on March 29, 1987 for WrestleMania III, with a reported attendance of 93,173.
 
I don't know about that guys, every site I've gone to says nothing about that being the "football" capacity. Besides, you can't lie about your max capacity, it's illegal. Don't forget the field was also used for baseball as well, with the max still listed as 80,300.

Even if you did take into consideration a football field and roll it back to just a ring, the area around it and the very long entrance walk, theres no way in hell that 13,000 people could fit in that space, no way.

Doesn't convince me..
 
Well say there are 83,000 seats for football. This leaves roughly 350 feet by 200 feet of floors pace to fill, minus the wrestling ring and entrance ramp. That leaves a lot of room on the floor. I'm not sure if it could cover the extra number, but I bet there was at least 5,000 floor seats, if not more.
 
^^^^^^ What the hell does that have to do with the Pontiac Silverdome? That's the Georgia Dome, completely different stadium dude...

I'm trying to figure out how to do the math on this, but I always was terrible at math in school and failed it many times, so not exactly my forte.

Anybody wanna take a crack at it? Say 200 x 350, each seat given a certain amount of area in ft. I don't know, perhaps I'm wrong, I don't think I am though. Mainly because nowhere does it say anything about that being the max football capacity. The max capacity listed for stadiums is the LEGAL amount of max people you can have in a place/the amount that can fit in a place. So really, if WWE wasn't lying, they would've broken the law and thus probably been in deep shit. Just another idea to throw around.
 
That could have been the case, but they also had a lot of time to plan this out and seek the proper permits and such. I don't think that having a years worth of time to prep the stadium, and the lack of pyro at the time, would have caused to big of a fuss.

I agree, I think the number of 90,000 plus is a little hazy, and hell you maybe right on the 80,000 max for the stadium. It's one of those things that you would like to believe the WWE on, but then again, physical layouts of the stadium make it hard to believe them.

225px-WM3.JPG

Wowza, You kinda forget how many people were at that thing. If the actual bowl of the Stadium held 80,000 people, it's not inconceivable by that picture that 10,000+ on the floor.
 
it doesnt say "max for football" it says "stadium max capacity...and even if it was the max for just football have any of you SEEN a damn football feild?? you CAN NOT fit 13,000 people on a football feild lol...but i also do wonder how they would get away with a reported attendance figure that was so much higher than the listed max capacity without getting in trouble from SOMEONE...hhmmm maybe becuase the attendance figure reported was a lie, and they really didnt have that many people in there?? sounds right to me...
 
Also don't forget the possibility of standing room tickets. I'll take this example from the NHL because it's the only one I know. If you look at attendance last year, Montreal sold out every game and their attendance was 100% for everyone of those games. Tampa Bay, the year after they won the cup, had an attendance of OVER 110% capacity, because they sold tickets as standing room tickets.

So it is possible for an arena to go over their maximum capacity as stated.
 
Also don't forget the possibility of standing room tickets. I'll take this example from the NHL because it's the only one I know. If you look at attendance last year, Montreal sold out every game and their attendance was 100% for everyone of those games. Tampa Bay, the year after they won the cup, had an attendance of OVER 110% capacity, because they sold tickets as standing room tickets.

So it is possible for an arena to go over their maximum capacity as stated.

I have to agree with prax here as standing room really does increase ticket sales and many teams in sports can say that. Look at the Superbowl it always goes above and beyond the seating capacity as they have a bunch of standing room added. So its still possible.
 
You can fill a stadium beyond its max seating capacity. Beaver Stadium is the second largest outdoor stadium in the country and almost yearly at least once they exceed their maximum capacity. If you don't believe me then you can check wikipedia for what its worth. If you look they have the seating capacity of roughly 107,000 and the record attendance there was 110,000 so without even starting to put people on the football field and when I was there and they set the second highest number also around 110,000 it wasnt packed to where you couldn't move. The WWF could have easily fit that entire crowd and probably did. And if you look at the math if everyone has three square feet of space which may or may not be enough, without putting anything else on the field that is another 30,000 people just on the field and then when you put the aisles and ring in it should leave enough space to still have around ten thousand.
 
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