IndyCar continues to shed venues

Continuing a trend in recent years, IndyCar gained one new venue, but lost three with their 2021 Schedule.

The IndyCar Series will race 17 times in 2021, with a new event on the Streets of Nashville, and a doubleheader at Texas Motor Speedway to open the month of May.

No longer on the schedule are races at Iowa Speedway, Richmond Raceway and Circuit of the Americas.

When your sporting events are largely invisible for 13 years on a TV channel that produces low TV ratings, less and less people are exposed to your product, resulting in fewer new fans generated. Less fans means less attendance, means failed events.

Of course IndyCar owns the Indy Speedway, so if things really got bad they could run, say, eight races a year at the track to keep the number of races a year around 17

The good news is that 9 of the 17 races next year are on network NBC.  But why not all 17? Buy the TV slots for the other 6 races and sell back the advertising. Times are tough and strategic decisions must be made to increase exposure of your product to bring value to your sponsors.