Dover International Speedway reducing capacity by 17,500 seats

DOVER, Del. — Dover International Speedway will have 17,500 seats less come next race day.

Not long after last month's race weekend, a crew was on site removing the grandstands along Turns 2 and 3.

The removal of seats is the first phase of what speedway officials are calling a "process to right-size the facility."

"It's an industrywide trend to reduce seating capacity at some of these large venues," said Gary Camp, senior director of communications at Dover International Speedway.

This is the first time the track has ever removed seating. At peak, the track held 135,000, but in 2011 the track cut its capacity down to 113,000 by widening seats. Seating will be at 95,500 after seats are finished being removed, a process which is scheduled for completion around Christmas, Camp said.

Dover International Speedway, which opened in 1969, has two Sprint Cup Series races annually, one in the spring, the other in the fall. Track officials estimated that Dover drew 133,000 fans to each of the 2008 Sprint Cup races. In 2012, though, the track estimated crowds at 85,000, according to jayski.com, a NASCAR-centered website.

Nationally, NASCAR tracks across the country have battled sagging attendance since the economy crashed in 2008. The downturn in race-goers is a problem that's become all too apparent on televised broadcasts that show rows and rows of empty seats. Those empty seats are bad for business, track officials have said. Many tracks, Dover now included, have opted to remove seats.

"It's more perception than reality," Camp said.

Estimates are not available for the most recent Dover races. The seats removed from the speedway will be recycled, Camp said.

The publicly traded company will work with architects to figure out how best to reinvent the parts of the track where seats were cleared. One possibility is having a party deck, Camp said.

Offredo writes for The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal