Ancillary events surrounding college football’s national championship game earlier this month drew 125,000 people to downtown Atlanta, organizers said today.
They said the four-year-old College Football Playoff’s previous attendance records were broken for several of the events: Playoff Fan Central, a three-day, 300,000-square foot interactive fan festival in the Georgia World Congress Center; Media Day, held in Philips Arena two days before the game; and the Extra Yard 5K race, held one day before the game.
In addition, the game itself – Alabama’s overtime victory over Georgia on Jan. 8 – drew 77,430 fans, a record for a college football game in Atlanta.
“I speak for the entire Atlanta Football Host Committee in saying that it was a tremendous honor to host the College Football Playoff National Championship,” Carl Adkins, the committee’s executive director, said in a news release, “and we look forward to what the future brings for Atlanta as a destination for major sporting events.”
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