Local TV blackouts helps race promoters

Miles is happy to help the Hulman George family to see tickets for the Indy 500, but to hell with the other race promoters – their races are not blacked out in the local market. Why?

Years ago NASCAR would always blacked out races in the local market and race attendance boomed. If you wanted to see the race you had to buy a ticket.

More recently NASCAR stopped doing that and it has contributed to a drop in race attendance. Of course there are other factors for the drop as well.

IndyCar CEO Mark Miles said fans should expect the local blackout of the Indianapolis 500 to continue into 2018 for that very reason.

"This is an event, because of its enormity, and the number of spectators on site in order to make it successful, we have to be pretty risk adverse in terms of dynamic of live television and spectator attendance."

Miles added, "We understand there are people who can't get here who would love to watch it live, and that's not far from top of mind. But at the same time, the race is shown same day, with a huge TV audience watching it here. And it's available by radio live, and we get pretty good cross-section of our community out here to watch."

The 102nd running of the Indianapolis 500 will be on May 27th.