Please put into perspective George’s damage

A reader writes, Dear AR1.com, I hear a lot about the damage Tony George did to the sport when he split it by creating the IRL. Is there any concrete evidence of this? Mary DeAngelis

Dear Mary, There is tons of evidence. Tony George's family owns the Indy 500, IndyCar's crown jewel. This is what he did to his own family and hence, of course the series:

Indianapolis 500 TV
1992: 14.1 million viewers (under CART)
2002: 7.15 million (IRL formed in 1996, already the ratings are 50% from CART years)
2012: 6.85 million (IRL renamed IndyCar a few years ago, ratings still dropping)

To put this in even more perspective, that 14.1 million viewers the Indy 500 used to get when CART was IndyCar racing dwarfed NASCAR's biggest race the Daytona 500. Now the Indy 500 gets less viewers than most NASCAR races, even the small ones. Less viewers = less sponsorship money. Everything is down – all metrics. So if it pains you to see IndyCar Racing in the straits it is, look no further than the split as the cause. Sad but true. Mark C.