Main Event attendance this year going to be 7000+?

I think its a bit optimistic. Considering the fact that they reduced the number of starting days, the WSOP ppl must be expecting less. My guess is that more than 2/3 of the people play the Monday (I am playing on the Monday) and that the main event will get 5,800. I would like it to be 7,000+, but I just don't see it happening.

Why the drop in attendance this year?

I think they dropped the number of starting days because they added an extra room and can now accommodate more players per day, rather than expecting less people. However, the 5,800 estimate is spot on based on attendance so far. But, I believe it will just barely break 6000 simply because its the Main Event and it will have a little bit better than average attendance. 7000+ seems nearly impossible.

Why so low this year...
Too many events?
One Drop backers with less cash for prelims?
Economy still hasn't recovered
Full Tilters have given up hope of ever getting paid and moved on to other things in life
Poker boom in America is now completely over

LOL... yeah because the 3000 players in today's event shows that is def correct.

One thing I think regarding the poker boom, is the average level of play is much much better. I think this is true at all levels

I don't know if I would say the boom is over. But however you care to look at it, the boom has taken the game to a new level. The fields may not be record-setting, but tourneys are far bigger than they ever were prior to 2003.

fields been booming as of late

Any examples to support your comment? Not trying to be difficult, just haven't been following the series closely.

Before the Seniors Event, if you look at entrants vs. same event last year, they were often down about 15%. However, a lot of events didn't really have a comparable event last year. For instance, an event that was a 10K last year was 5K this year or vice versa, so you can't compare them. But in the first couple of weeks, attendance seemed to be down.

Then the Seniors Event happened and it had insane attendance. Since then, a few events have been up since last year, like the 5K NL #50, 1001 this year over 865 last year.

I think this shows that there's too many events. Besides decreasing the value of the idea of a bracelet event (more events, each event is less special), when there's 60 of them, its too spread out. So, maybe a lot of players skipped the first 2 weeks and waited to arrive closer to the Main. WSOP should stop at 50 bracelet events and it might be time to drop the open 1K's.

Structure of these events is pretty horrendous and I dont know if I'll play anything under 3ks in years to come

So 6000+ for Main Event sounds about right? Still not bad?

Why would they want to do that? They suddenly hate profit?

Lol, of course they wouldn't give up their precious, exorbitant rake. But, what about the "brand equity" of the WSOP? You start devaluing bracelets and the WSOP brand will decline, attendance will plummet further and they will lose profit in the long run...maybe they only care about the short term.

What if they run 50 events instead of 60, but get the same total turnout so that each event has more entrants than they do with 60 events, don't they rake the same?

10 fewer events = 5 fewer days for degens to gamble in the Rio pits, 5 fewer nights to stay in their hotel rooms, 5 fewer days spent buying their crappy food.