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Sebring 12h is a destination event. You can't compare it to an event at CoTA. Just like Lime Rock, you could have a wagon race around the track and the place would be full of campers and spectators. A track like that has a built in audience. CoTA does not. Even though it's right in Austin, it just doesn't get the spectators. It was built for F1.
The facility depends on local vendors to come out and supply the food for everyone (just like you see at Sebring). Austin is full of those vendors and food trucks. They are literally everywhere, yet at the track, there are two or three. So, if you want to go over to some stands far away, you will be all by yourself. These vendors will not go any more because they lose money at the facility. Unless you are at the few specific areas, where any types of services are, you are on your own. Unless you do the F1 race, it's like a private track rental day by the services you get.
CoTA also looks like a ghost town because it can easily hold 150K but when 10K show up, it looks like nothing (there's a reason why they do a fan walk and the respective series takes tons of PR pics because all of the spectators are in one spot for 30 minutes and it makes the event look packed). The most people I have ever seen there being physically at the track, was when GA ran there the first time in 2013. I think that was because the race was in April/May. Then for PWC, not so much. Then for the September WEC/IMSA event, even less than PWC in March.
For the WEC, they spend about $5 on local promotion for the event. If it wasn't for the local morning show on Thursday interviewing Ed Brown being the local boy racing at CoTA in the WEC, there would be literally no way of knowing there was an event at CoTA at all if you lived in the area. They even cut down or eliminated the traffic control by the local cops outside the track because they found out, there was no need for them due to no traffic.
In the end, you'll find many people willing to travel 12 hours to get to Sebring. 3 hours to get to Lime Rock, yet barely anyone making CoTA their destination event and travel great lengths to get there.
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