Mardi Gras crowd puzzle

(BNews, March 2002)

How many people watched the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras 
parade on Saturday night? Mardi Gras President Julie Regan estimated in 
Monday's Sydney Morning Herald that "a record crowd of 550,000 to 
600,000 watched the parade." Figures of this magnitude have been given 
by Mardi Gras organisers, and repeated by the media, for the past five 
years or so.

The Mardi Gras parade route is 2.5km long, making 5km of available 
viewing space. Allowing three people per metre (a tight fit), 15,000 
people can line both sides of the parade route. A crowd of 150,000 would 
therefore line the entire route ten deep. A crowd of 600,000 would line 
the route 40 deep.

The crowd was thickest in Oxford St, but cannot have been more than 
about ten deep there because of the shopfronts. At Taylor Square the 
crowd was probably 20 deep for a short distance, but it thinned out 
dramatically along Flinders St. Once the parade entered Moore Park, 
there was almost no crowd at all. The average crowd depth was therefore 
probably four or five, making a total crowd of 60,000 to 75,000.

Meanwhile, predictions that the Mardi Gras party would be a financial 
disaster do not seem to have been borne out. While figures are not yet 
available, Sydney sources suggest that there was a last-minute rush of 
ticket sales for the party, taking the final figure to perhaps 18,000.

Last week media reports said that only 12,000 of the 20,000 tickets 
available had been sold, which would have been catastrophic for Mardi 
Gras, dependent on party ticket sales for most of its revenue. But at $110 
a ticket, 18,000 sales would be a reasonably good outcome.