The Izod IndyCar Series is seeing a payoff for all the hard promotion work series officials have been doing: for the second year in a row, both track attendance and TV viewership has gone up.
TV ratings are the most important statistic in sports; TV ratings determine which networks will sign a sport, and thus how many viewers have a chance to watch. Also, TV ratings are the statistic sponsors look at when determine whether and how much to spend on a sport of on teams.
IndyCar, which finally ended a fifteen-year civil war between two competitng series in 2008, has had its best year since unification.
“IndyCar had one of its strongest years in growth on TV and in live audience in 15 years on the last year of our current car,” CEO Randy Bernard said on the IndyCar website. “We believe that the new car, along with Honda, Chevy and Lotus coming into the Izod IndyCar Series, will help the sport show positive momentum for 2012.”
IndyCar airs on two networks. Most of the races are broadcast on cable channel Versus (soon to become NBC Sports Network) which reaches about 75 million of the nation’s 116 million TV households. Five races, including the Indy 500, air on ABC, which reaches every home in America.
IndyCar on Versus saw a 10 percent increase in viewers; 402,000 per race average, up from 365,000 in 2010.
ABC saw an increase of 28 percent, averaging three million viewers per race, with the Indy 500 attracting 6.7 million fans, an increase of 16 percent over 2010.
Overall, the series averaged 1.4 million viewers per event.
Attendance at IndyCar events was up 22 percent in 2011, which is important for the individual tracks and also important for the series. IndyCar has a wider choice of potential venues if the series can show that track owners make money from IndyCar races.
