Great post, as usual. There is no easy answer as to the decline of interest in the Indy 500. If you look at the numbers for ratings and attendence (as we know, there are no official attendence numbers for Indy) the slide began right about the time of the CART – IRL split. The loss of the name drivers and teams, coupled with the retirement of the BIG names (the Senior Unsers, Foyt, Andretti, as well as Jonhcock and Mears) hurt the name recognition with the general public. NASCAR’s epic rise in the 90′s happened at the same time. So it’s hard to point to any one thing.

I grew up in Upstate NY. Auto racing was the Indy 500. Sure we had the Glen, (F1 and Sports Cars), but NASCAR was still viewed as a Southern sport. My memorial day memories of the 70′s always involved watching the replay of the race with Dad, cheeering on our favorites. Then the sport would recede again until next year. Which I think leads to the underlying issue between the IRL / CART split and the current camps of Open Wheel supporters.

Indy is bigger than IndyCar racing. It is a part of the national consciousness in a way that the other races on the schedule could never be. It is like the Knetucky Derby in that sense. It’s an American tradition based on an old-tyme-Midwestern-motherhood-apple pie-hotdogs-4th of July-fireworks-inward looking sort of tradition. It draws people that only watch one day a year. Like my experience as a kid, Indy is a world unto itself.

IndyCar-CART-ChampCar is a different sort of thing. It is a league, a sport, a business, that is more outward looking but has a dedicated core of followers and fans. It moves around the country, (and world) and changes venues regularly. It also has traditions, like the Glen, Long Beach, Milwaukee, etc., but they don’t exist in the Public Consciousness the same way that Indy does. They exist only in the consciousness of the dedicated fan base. There’s a reason Milwaukee can only draw 50K, but Indy can draw 250K.

The marketing trick that Terry Angstadt faces is to help Indy regain that place in the broad Public consciousness, and then parlay some of that interest into an increased following for the IndyCar series. Racing is a different sort of sport in that it relies on sponsorship $ to exist, and sponsors are only interested if they see the benefit of wide exposure for their brand. The stick and ball sports can get by on ticket & merchandise sales and TV contracts. They don’t need Target to pay their expenses. (I say that in irony, with full knowledge that Target is the new name sponsor for the Twins new ballpark).

It’s a bit like putting the “CART” before the horse, meaning that the exposure has to come before the sponsorship dollars to fund the league will follow. Basically, he needs to SELL the product before he HAS a product. Not an easy task, since they don’t have an unlimited war chest of $$$$ to buy exposure. Tony George has pumped a lot of the family fortune into getting it this far. His pockets were deepers than CART’s which is the reason the IRL won the war. But now that they are together, they have to spend wisely to build that brand. That’s why like it or not, the open spec days of the 60′s and 70′s, with multiple engines and chassis are not coming back soon. The sponsorship $ just won’t support it right now. So better to dress up the pig (Dallara) and do their best to put on a show with Daniker and the Dancing King, and hope the public interest increases. Not the best situtation, but it’s where we are…

It has nothing to do with internationalism. CART was booming in the early ’90s with Andretti, Fittipaldi, Luyendyk, Mansell, Villeneuve, etc… It has everything to do with the split happening before the next generation’s stars emerged.

Nobody’s going to talk about Scott Dixon’s 2008 winning car like they will the Marmon Wasp’s rearview mirror, or some of the experimental cars of the 50′s and 60′s – cars that actually had names. The cars were unique and innovative, and when someone would roll their entry off the trailer, people took notice. Some of the radical designs would work, others not so much. Practice, qualifying, and racing all had an element of surprise, because we didn’t know if the cars would be fast or break. Those unique cars are the cars that are in the IMS museum today, and every one has a story to tell. I think they are as much a part of the history and aura of the Indy 500 as the drivers themselves. These newer cars? They just don’t add much.