IRL is MIA with race fans

Friday, Sept. 24, 1999 | 10:02 a.m.

Chris Powell is at a loss to explain why the Indy Racing League has struggled to draw fans at virtually every venue but Texas Motor Speedway and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Before Powell became general manager of the Las Vegas Motor Speedway last December, he took in the first IRL race at Charlotte (N.C) Motor Speedway in 1997 and said he was floored by the show put on by the open-wheel cars.

"I remember sitting up in turn one and watching those cars come out of turn two and head down the backstretch ... they were flat-out haulin' the mail," Powell said. "And you talk about racing, I'm sure there were more lead changes in that race than at the (NASCAR) Winston Cup races they hold there.

"I don't know why it hasn't caught on, but then again, what is the definition of catching on? You could bring out Formula One if it was born four years ago in Europe and I don't know if it would be what it is today."

The problem with the four-year-old IRL, at least in terms of attendance, is one of perception said Fred Nation, IRL vice president of corporate communications and public relations.

People see NASCAR filling 150,000-seat speedways for its Winston Cup events and immediately assume the IRL is failing because it is drawing "only" an average of 30,000 to most of its events. But, as Nation is quick to point out, NASCAR has been around for 51 years.

"It's OK to compare us to NASCAR, but we ought to be compared to NASCAR maybe in the early '50s as opposed to (NASCAR) in 1999," Nation said. "And the same if we were compared to CART -- let's look at CART in the early 1980s and what you will find is that the Indy Racing League is well ahead of where those two organizations were in their first four or five years."

Wall Street investment company Bear, Stearns & Co., which tracks publicly traded motor sports companies and series, attributes the IRL's attendance problems to the split between CART and the IRL.

"We attribute the lower attendance levels to the 1995 split between these two racing organizations and the resulting absence of the more familiar drivers of Indy-style racing (Andretti, Unser and Vasser) at the IRL races, including the Indianapolis 500," the company reports in its "The Business of Motorsports" publication.

Sunday's Vegas.com 500 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway is likely to draw a crowd of about 40,000 to the 107,000-seat facility, although Powell has refused to disclose pre-race ticket sales figures. That, according to Nation, is an acceptable crowd for the upstart racing series.

"We believe that our audience at most facilities is good if it's 30,000 to 40,000 people," Nation said. "Now, if it's a facility like (Pikes Peak International Raceway) and you have 30,000 to 40,000 people, the place looks virtually full. But 30,000 to 40,000 people at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway looks sparse, indeed.

"We have a perceptual problem based on the fact that we play in big rooms. But we have chosen the route to race at the new NASCAR tracks that are being built around the country and those tracks have a lot more seats than we can fill right at the moment."

Critics of the IRL, which was formed in 1995 by Indianapolis Motor Speedway president Tony George and began racing in 1996, also point to two other areas in which the series is lacking: TV ratings and solid corporate sponsorship for all race teams.

George has pointed out that ratings for virtually every form of motor sport, with the exception of NASCAR, are down since the cable TV boom of the past two decades. That's true of TV sports in general.

The IRL this summer signed a new five-year contract with ABC Sports and ESPN to televise all of the league's races, a move Nation sees as a vote of confidence by the network that also will help many of the lesser-funded teams to land more secure sponsorship packages.

"That translates into much more comfort and predictability for our sponsors -- that's good," Nation said of the TV package. "We have, like any racing series, some very strong teams, the middle-rated teams and those who are always searching for sponsorship.

"We have a bit more of a challenge with some of our teams, but on the other hand, we have a lot of teams that can come into this sport at a fairly low price that couldn't get an opportunity anywhere else and some of them have been fairly successful. Our low threshold of cost has been helpful, even when it has been difficult for some of these teams to get sponsorship."

The biggest challenge the IRL faces, according to Nation, is making the league's drivers known to the auto racing fans -- something the series has attempted to address this year with a series of creative television ads.

"It takes a lot of exposure to establish our racers -- or any athletes -- in today's market, but we're taking steps to do it," nation said.

As the series expands next year into Northern Kentucky, and Chicago and Kansas City in 2001, Nation said he expects awareness and interest in the IRL to increase.

"We're in the right place to make some definite progress," Nation said. "At the same time, we have to find where our best audiences are. We have started virtually the opposite of how NASCAR started; NASCAR started in the southeast ... in the areas where it was well known.

"We started the Indy Racing League and we have one race in the Midwest -- at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway -- and we have gone into areas where open-wheel racing was not very well known.

"It just takes time. Are we satisfied? No. But we have stepped back and looked at all the challenges the Indy Racing League has faced over its short existence, and we have met many of those challenges."

Powell said Las Vegas Motor Speedway remains committed to the IRL, and denied that attendance for this year's race will determine whether or not the Speedway will host the series in 2000 and beyond.

"I won't say this race will be a measuring stick," Powell said. "We have not committed to the IRL for 2000, nor have they committed to us. We need to have events here and we're fully set to go forward with the IRL, but there is still some negotiating to do.

"I'm not going to shy away from the fact that it's a challenge (selling the IRL event) ... but race fans who choose not to come are going to miss a good show. This is still the relative infancy of the IRL but the one area they're not lacking in is putting on a terrific show."