Allow me to interrupt the New Day Rising project for just a moment.
The television ratings for the penultimate IndyCar race of the season are in. The number is consistent with the others from the second half of the 2009 season on Versus.
Sports Media Watch has the complete story.
Here is how IndyCar racing compared with other Versus offerings of the past week.
- Capital/Bruins NHL game = 405,000 viewers
- IndyCar at Homestead-Miami Speedway = 268,000 viewers
- UFL (new pro football league) 1st game = 205,000 viewers
The numbers provide still more reason to undertake the New Day Rising project. The IndyCar Championship race barely topped a start-up league.
We now turn our attention back to completing our New Vision for the sport.
Roggespierre
Meanwhile, a cage fighting card with no names garnered 419,000. For them, that is market rejection. Now imagine that there's a series with far higher costs and supposedly more market cache getting about half that. Well, you don't have to.
ReplyDeleteI have read this was the first sub .1 rating in Indy Car history. Something like a .09 TV rating for Homestead. I am sure Angstadt will say he had that rating in mind all along, when he and the braintrust did the Versus deal.
ReplyDeleteAnd, yet we still have 5 million dollar budgets for 2010? Why?
With the lack of audience and importance in the American sports scene, you should be able to run the full season for about a million bucks TOPS. Roggie's terrific knowledge on this topic is well documented and this is close to the number he has thrown out as well.
Move the start-time at Indy back to 11:00 EST (which is 11:00 local time; back to where it was for close to 50 years) and then watch the fun that would ensue. I know of at LEAST 5 current Cup drivers, who would be signed up today for next year's Indy 500, if the start time be moved back where it used to be at Indy.
But what good would 30 full-season cars and 50 cars at Indy be anyway? Things are just swell. Lets keep things in the Indy Car Country Club at around 22 full-timers (with only 3 or 4 having a prayer of competing) and about 35 at Indy (because Honda doesn't want anymore then that) and keep on keepin' on.
My guess - and that's all it is - is that the IMS Board does not have the stomach for Big Ideas right now. It wants to see an immediate cash flow uptick.
ReplyDeleteAngstadt and Barnhart might have the wherewithal to accomplish that much. They certainly have not demonstrated that they have what it would take to reinvigorate the sport of IndyCar racing.
The closest they've come is Barnhart's 3-wheeled Indy car idea. I would prefer that he recognize that creating a monopolistic supply chain by fiat is a huge mistake.
But that won't happen.
Roggespierre