Indy 500 qualifying TV Ratings (Update)

UPDATE The final TV ratings are in for both days of qualifying for the Indy 500 and once again ABC delivered over 1 million viewers for both. 1,054,000 people watched the Saturday broadcast of qualifying (0.7 final rating) and 1,328,000 (0.9 rating) watched the Sunday final qualifying.

AR1 has stated over, and over, and over to no avail, that 100% of IndyCar races need to be on free-over-the-air network TV in order to attract a third and fourth engine manufacturer and have sponsors knocking down the door. Network TV can deliver 1 million viewers per broadcast as we see with all ABC TV ratings for IndyCar.

We have been saying this for 10 years, but IndyCar never does it – over half the races are broadcast on cable TV and this continues with the new NBC TV deal.

And, therefore, for 10 years IndyCar has failed to land a 3rd engine manufacturer, and we predict they will continue to fail for another 10 years until they can deliver the eyeballs needed to make the financial investment in IndyCar worth it for a manufacturer. Ditto for the series sponsor search and for the team sponsor search. Who wants to pay big sums of money to sponsor something and only have 300K people seeing it.

1 million viewers (min) per broadcast gets attention in the marketing and advertising world.

IndyCar needs to stop saying they want a 3rd engine manufacturer, because they are not getting one in the current TV environment. And fans are tired hearing they are talking to potential manufacturers but nothing ever comes out of it.

05/21/18

ABC Network earned 0.8 (1 million viewers) and 1.0 (1.3 million viewers) overnight Nielsen ratings, respectively, for this past Saturday's and Sunday's Indianapolis 500 qualifying sessions at the Indy Motor Speedway.

Both are up 10% from a 0.7 and 0.9 last year.