I think people focus too much on vertex count and ignore the many many other factors that brings down performance. What kind of lighting is being used? what is the complexity of the shaders? how many drawcalls is the scene consuming? Texture Size? Lightmap density? did you use the editor’s optimization modes to check any of this?
While 45k-60k seems like a reasonable polycount for a character, a stadium full of them will need LODs.