New IRL boss identifies more with NASCAR

UPDATE We find the choice of CEO for the IRL to be interesting. He had no experience at all with IndyCar racing, and in fact, a PBR sponsorship with RCR in NASCAR was recently announced, and no doubt was negotiated during his tenure. We have our doubts, but will generally reserve judgment and see how things progress. Alan Mulally came from the aerospace industry and was hired to run Ford Motor Company, and has done a stellar job.

So perhaps the board at the speedway saw that he built something from basically nothing, and thinks he can do that with the IndyCar brand.

We certainly would have preferred to see a seasoned racing professional in there. Too many times have very successful businessmen come into racing from other businesses, and fell flat on their face. You don’t really see that happen the other way around. This is a tough sport.

Once again, only time will tell.

01/30/10 Randy Bernard, the former CEO of Professional Bull Riders, had this to say last year in a Sports Business Journal interview before taking over as the new CEO of the IRL. Seems Mr. Bernard thinks PBR fans are a lot like NASCAR and NFL fans. He never mentioned IndyCar. At the time maybe he did not know what it was.

Q: During the course of its season (December 29-November 9), the PBR will compete against the Super Bowl, the Final Four, The Masters, the Kentucky Derby, the NBA Finals, MLB, etc. With so many sports options available for fans, how does the PBR break through?

Bernard: As a young sport it's very important for us to understand what fans interact with us as well as other sports. We try to focus the time slot that we bought on network television around key events that could help bring new fans into our sport. What's really important is learning the crossover of what our fans want to watch. In our research we see NFL and NASCAR are two big areas that our fans watch. We used to follow behind NASCAR and on Fox I think we had three events this year when we followed the NFL. We're using the big events in certain sports to help us grow.

Q: Are your demographics similar to NASCAR's and the NFL's?

Bernard: They're almost identical to NASCAR and similar to the NFL.