Indy 500 TV Rating

UPDATE #3 The final rating for the IRL's Indy 500 On ABC last Sunday was a 3.6, down every year since the IRL took over. It is so sad to see given the Indy 500 when CART was the featured series was as high as 15 or 16 rating points and regularly garnered a 10 or higher rating for the Indy 500.

06/02/10 A reader writes, Dear AR1, You hit the nail on the head, pennywise and pound foolish. Despite IZOD the great promotion of the series they are doing, with the Versus deal and its low TV ratings the IRL has become invisible and hence irrelevant. Sure there are a few ABC races, but week in and week out they are invisible. Even the NASCAR Nationwide Series gets more network TV coverage. When the team owners like Roger Penske, Michael Andretti and Chip Ganassi are more popular than the drivers, that is a real problem. Jeff Hampton

06/02/10 The overnight Nielsen TV ratings are in for this year’s Indianapolis 500 … and the news isn’t great. The race, which aired on ABC (WRTV-TV Channel 6) on Sunday, earned a 3.68 rating, according to New York-based Nielsen Media Research. Each rating point represents 1.1 million homes nationwide, meaning just over 4 million households across the U.S. tuned to this year’s race.

This year’s national rating was down from a 3.96 last year, or about 4.36 million TV households. In the central Indiana market, the race predictably scored much higher, earning a 12.2 rating. Locally, each rating point equals 10,720 TV central Indiana households, meaning 130,784 tuned in. That means 22 percent of all TV households in this market watched the race (which is tape delayed here).

The local numbers too were down, from a 14.6 rating in 2009 and a 26 percent audience share.

The Indianapolis 500 Victory Banquet, televised locally on WTHR-TV Channel 13 the night after the race, also saw a rating drop from 12.1 in 2009 to 8.0 this year. WRTV officials think part of this year’s drop can be attributed to a 2009 rating spike in Indy 500 programming. IBJ.com

06/01/10 The 94th Indianapolis 500 on Sunday earned a 4.0 overnight Nielsen rating on ABC The overnight is the lowest for the race since it began airing live in '86. It is down 4.8% from a 4.2 rating last year, and down 21.6% from a 5.1 overnight for the '08 race, which was the first following the IndyCar-Champ Car merger.