96 hours in Cincinnati: How many people attended local sporting events this weekend?

It was a very busy sports weekend for Cincinnati.

From the Bengals' home opener at the recently renamed Paycor Stadium to an FC Cincinnati game, the LPGA Kroger Queen City Championship and all the usual high school football madness, there were a large number of people attending sporting events throughout the area.

But how many people, exactly? The precise number may be hard to estimate, but we have some stadium capacity sizes and reported attendance numbers to help us make an educated guess.

Luckily for our calculations (and traffic Downtown), the Reds played on the road against the Milwaukee Brewers, but they're back Monday for home games against the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Here's how many people (we think) attended a sporting event in Greater Cincinnati over the weekend.

Cincinnati Bengals at Paycor Stadium

It was an unpredictable and nerve-wracking game for the Bengals, as they faced off and ultimately lost against the Pittsburgh Steelers at Paycor Stadium. And it was the first game of the season, so excitement was high both in and around the venue.

According to ESPN, Sunday's game attendance was 63,238 people, just a few thousand shy of Paycor Stadium's 65,535 capacity.

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FC Cincinnati at TQL Stadium

FC Cincinnati hasn't released the exact number of people who attended Saturday's home game against the San Jose Earthquakes. But according to Soccer Stadium Digest, an average of 22,310 people attend each FC Cincinnati home game. That number is an increase from last year, in which an average of 21,175 people attended each game.

TQL Stadium's capacity is 26,000.

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LPGA Kroger Queen City Championship at Kenwood Country Club

The LPGA returned to Cincinnati for the first time in over 30 years last week, as some of the world's best players competed in the 2022 Kroger Queen City Championship.

Ally Ewing's scorching-hot play in the final round, which included five straight birdies, helped her claim her third career LPGA Tour win. And thousands of fans made the trip to Kenwood Country Club to watch Ewing and her peers take the course.

According to tournament officials, over 50,000 fans attended the Kroger Queen City Championship from Sept. 5-11. That's over 7,100 people per day, which equals an attendance of more than 28,500 from Thursday to Sunday. However, more fans likely showed up between Thursday and Sunday than the first three days, considering the first round didn't begin until Sept. 8.

UC Bearcats football at Nippert Stadium

It wasn't the University of Cincinnati's first football game of the season, but it was the first home game as the Bearcats faced off (and won handily) against the Kennesaw State Owls.

Nippert Stadium's capacity is 40,000, and an estimated 37,014 fans were in attendance, according to the university's athletic department.

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Greater Cincinnati high school football

Of course, we couldn't leave crowd estimates to just the college and pro levels. Over the weekend, a number of high school teams around Greater Cincinnati met for some epic showdowns.

More than 60 Greater Cincinnati games took place around Ohio, Northern Kentucky and Indiana on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Based on the sheer number of games and how stadium sizes for schools vary, it's almost impossible to know how many fans went to see their teams play.

High school football bleacher maker Southern Bleacher Company has a number of stadiums (and their individual capacities) listed on its website, with capacity numbers ranging from around 1,600 seats to 3,200, depending on the school and size. So, if we estimate that stadiums around Greater Cincinnati can seat an average of 1,800, and multiply that by 60 ... that's over 108,000 people.

Final attendance calculations

As we would like to stress, this final number is an estimate. But after adding up the (what we hope is close to accurate) numbers from Paycor Stadium, TQL Stadium, Nippert Stadium, Kenwood Country Club and the many, many high school football stadiums, we estimate that over 258,000 people went to a sporting event in Cincinnati this weekend.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: A guess on how many people attended local sporting events this weekend