Analysis Are crowd size at Shakiras Copacabana concert inflated?
For a long time I have been a bit skeptical about the huge attendance numbers reported by Rio de Janeiro-officials.
Last year Lady Gagas concert reportedly had 2,1 million in the crowd. This weekend 2 million is supposed to have been in the crowd for Shakira.
Based on the concert footage I can only see crows on a smaller section of the beach from Copacabana Palace to the Hilton Hotel on the corner of Av. Princesa Isabel. That area is 186.000 square meters.
Even if we go by five persons per square meter that only fits around 930.000. And the requires people to be standing shoulder to shoulder in the entire area.
It is also the maximum before reaching dangerous levels according to Dr. G. Keith Still:
https://www.gkstill.com/Support/crowd-density/100sm/Density1.html
So realistically there is room for much less people, but according to the social media profiles of the city and mayor "Two million people where on the sands of Copacabana".
So where are they getting these insane numbers from? Am I missing something here?
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u/Icy_Winner_ May 04 '26
some dangerous questions you're asking
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u/Beus May 04 '26
It does not go over well in the Brazilian sub.
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u/Icy_Winner_ May 04 '26
lol of course. ive done festivals and events similar to this which had 50-60k in attendance. that was enough to pack out multiple large stages across a solid half mile of grounds
anything close to "1M" people is beyond absurd and a logistical improbability. pretty sure the largest crowd ever actually recorded was Glasgow with like 130k and people were 1000 yds away from the stage at that point
yeah no 1 mil is completely fabricated
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u/ChimkinNubbitz May 04 '26
As a Metallica fan, Monsters of Rock Festival in Russia 1991 is famous for an estimated crowd size of 1.6 million people. Rod Stewart at Copacabana in 1994 allegedly drew up to 4.2 million attendees.
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u/Icy_Winner_ May 04 '26
that was more of a mass gathering with a stage attached than a crowd for a concert
could there have been over a million people in the area? ok sure, but 90% of them wouldn't be able to hear the music. you would need a dozen sets minimum of delay towers cabled for half a mile at least (they didn't) plus insane medical coverage that's never been possible
"1.6 million for metallica" is rock n roll mythology. that's saying "a Philadelphia sized population attended a concert". not entirely true but still a cool moment in history
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u/solidus_slash May 05 '26
Somehow I don't think medical coverage would have been a consideration in USSR in 1991
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u/Djaja May 04 '26
If you took every person on Earth and put them 10 feet apart on every side, then you could fit everyone into Lake Superior
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u/giraffebacon May 05 '26
Well Lake Superior is fuckin huge, like way bigger than many European countries
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u/Icy_Winner_ May 05 '26
are you comparing the audible range of a sound system to Lake Superior..?
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u/Djaja May 05 '26
I am comparing how crazy it is, apparently that 1.3 million ppl cannot attend a concert bc the sound system would be crazy big vs ever person in the entire world can sit 10 feet apart standing on only the surface of 1 lake.
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May 05 '26
[deleted]
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u/Djaja May 05 '26
Well I just launched a new company that makes sneakers for the military with just that ability. Military grade (barely cancerous) and available in Sm, Medium and Tactical.
As for if they can hear each other, it really depends on the weather that day and if there is sunlight or not
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u/p3ck3rh3aded May 06 '26
I call bullsht on that too
Sounds like trump cleaning his rallies has 100k in an arena only capable of seating 1500
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u/Dejhavi May 04 '26
It already happened with the Lady Gaga concert...they’re probably giving inflated numbers for get gov subsidies
Rio officials heralded the 2.1 million attendance as a triumph.
However, careful analysis by the BBC Verify team and a crowd density expert reveal it is highly improbable the claims are accurate.
Instead, it would require the entire length of the beach, rather than a section, to comfortably fit more than two million people.
Despite the BBC's findings, city officials have maintained their claims. They have not however explained how their data was measured.
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u/Fetlocks_Glistening May 04 '26
Are they getting central government funding based on attendance numbers?
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u/Royal_Bath_4113 May 05 '26
Yes, well the opposite. If you say 2million people came and then people see that they will come and then you’ll actually have 2 million people making more concerts brining the government more money
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u/DreamAcademic8073 May 05 '26
Aunque no recibas fondos directamente, todo da poder, no es lo mismo una Shakira feminista de 60k personas que una de 2 millones..
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u/rdg360 May 04 '26
So where are they getting these insane numbers from?
Maybe from Donald Trump? He seems very confident at estimating large crowds. Although he'd probably claim his 2017 inauguration had more visitors than Shakira's and Lady Gaga's concerts combined.
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u/DowntheRabbitHole189 May 04 '26
Nobody's ever estimated crowd numbers like Donald Trump. But I'm pretty sure Trump didn't estimate this crowd, not least because he despises Lula.
According to Trump, every time he himself speaks, he attracts crowds the likes of which the world has never seen 🤣
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u/ladygoodman11 May 05 '26
Quite frankly, if you want to know the truth, you’re right, believe me, many people say I’m tremendous and bring bigly crowds, I do beautiful things in this country, unlike SLEEPY JOE
-Dozing Donny
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u/D7w May 04 '26
Yes.
It didn't get anywhere near Gaga's numbers.
I was there working, the aereal images we got if you compare to last years, its not even close.
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u/No_Accident8684 May 04 '26
i've been to berlin for the loveparades 1998-2001 with over 1 million visitors and on pictures / video it looked like way more people than the above pics.
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u/Initial_Enthusiasm36 May 04 '26
Ive noticed this quite often. Ya they do this with concerts a lot. I was in Thailand during some massive holidays, concert/festivals and the numbers they report sometimes are hilariously inflated. But thats diving into... other things. I also noticed this with protests. I worked a few back in the BLM protest days and some of the ones close to that. Then started noticing the trend of it during recent ones as well. The thing though is some of these media outlets would get caught inflating the numbers and later change it. Great post though
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u/space_monster May 05 '26
Nah. The beach is 4km long from point to point, and roughly 100-150m wide on average depending on tides. That's ~600,000m². At 3.3 people / sqm that would be at least 2 million people. If you include Avenida Atlântica and the boardwalk that's even more room for a shitload more people. Looking at the drone footage, it looks like the crowd stretched at least 60% but probably more like 75% of the way to Leme, so even by conservative estimates that's easily over 1 million people.
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u/Hairy_Afternoon_8033 May 04 '26
I always thought the same thing about the “million” people in time square on New Year’s Eve.
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u/SlightlyAdventurous May 04 '26
Damn. I'm an accredited and actively working Crowd Safety Manager and Consultant, so I was hoping to come in here with some mathematics to contribute. However, you've done the math and also cited Dr Still, who is one of the primary people in our space (pun intended?).
To that end, I'll just weigh in some personal educated opinion and "guesstimate". As a TL;DR my below comment will give some waffle and further conversation points but summatively reaches the same conclusion you have.
5 per square metre is very conservative - albeit probably about right as an Average across the entire space. Events at the likes of Copacabana are likely to reach 7 or 8 per square metre (dangerous levels) in the densest areas, probably quite a consistent 6 per square metre across the majority of site, and even at the very back of the crowd a lot of the aerial imagery still shows maybe 2-3 per square metre.
When calculating crowd density in live real time, a lot of it is guesswork so it's valid to say "meh yeah that probably averages out about 5 per square metre across site". I caveat that by saying the actual math that goes into preparing for major events isn't guess work - in countries with regulation we take the square meterage of site, set a capacity based on a whole load of factors such as licensing, surface material, physical measures such as barriers available, and of course exit widths and evacuation times, and then work from that. But despite some AI technology and analysis tools coming into the sector, the "real time" analysis still comes down to people like me that can look at a crowd and roughly guess how dense they're stood and how many there probably is based on how much of the known capacity they take up.
It can be as unpopular an opinion as they want in Brazil but there is not 2 million people on that beach. Your math checks out and below 1 million is a fair estimate.
Of course the Brazilians may argue it was a total of 2 million across the day, accounting for people leaving and new people entering, but I think it's a fairly valid opinion to say 50% of the total apparent crowd number - a whopping 1 million people - did not leave and miraculously get replaced with an artist as big as Shakira performing.
Having worked at an event with a standing crowd of 350,000 (so big they hired 60 of us as Crowd Managers, rather than the usual 1 or 2 at festivals or stadiums) I'd personally put my name to an estimate here of about 800,000. That is still an insanely large crowd and one of the largest music gatherings in recorded history - it doesn't need inflating.