Decline of the Indy 500?
An article in today's Baltimore Sun discusses the Indianapolis 500.
The writer, Michael Hill, begins by discussing the history of the race:
Forty years ago, there were only two ways to see the Indianapolis 500 -- be among the lucky 400,000 or so who got into packed track on race day, or go to a closed circuit television broadcast of the race.
That's right. In the early 1960s, thousands spent their Memorial Day in darkened movie theaters watching cars race around this venerable 2 1/2-mile rectangle.
Few events other than championship boxing matches could sell tickets to closed circuit broadcasts. But the Indianapolis 500 could.
It was that big. In the Midwest, it made Memorial Day the equivalent of Christmas and July 4. It drew the most spectators of any sporting event. It had the fastest cars, the bravest drivers.
Hill first talks of the decline in general terms:
It's not the greatest race in the world anymore. It is not even considered the biggest race in America. That title goes to the Daytona 500, NASCAR's premier stock car event.
Where once scores of mechanics and drivers descended on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the entire month of May, all searching for the speed needed to get their car in the race, now there are barely enough cars to fill the field.
Since 1986, the race has been broadcast live -- no need to pay for a closed circuit showing. But now ABC is having trouble giving it away. In 1992, 14.1 million people watched the Indy 500. Last year, 6.7 million watched. Almost every NASCAR race gets a bigger audience than that. The Daytona 500 is up to almost 18 million.
And, there were plenty of tickets available for today's Indy 500.
The decline and fall of the Indianapolis 500 is a story of an increasingly parochial America changing its tastes and its relationship with technology. It is the story of the transition of sporting institutions into entertainment industries.
It is also a tale of hubris on the part of Tony George, who seemed to think that the Indy 500 was so big and important that it could never sustain serious damage. But he managed to land some crippling blows on the American institution that was in his care.
Hill later discusses the IRL-CART split and the rise of NASCAR:
The rules applied to the Indy cars still allowed for variation and experimentation as designers and mechanics searched for extra speed. That all changed in 1996. George, the grandson of Tony Hulman who died in 1977, was trying to regain control of the race from the car owners who had formed the group CART in 1979 and forced changes in many of its rules.
George formed the Indy Racing League and said only drivers that ran its series with its cars - technologically far inferior to the CART models - could race in the Indy 500. It was as if the Master's golf tournament had said that players must use persimmon woods and hickory shafts to compete there.
The CART teams boycotted and kept their own series. For the first time really in its history, those watching the Indianapolis 500 could not say they were seeing the fastest cars and the best drivers in America. The race has never recovered from that.
This happened as NASCAR was rapidly expanding out of its southeastern base. American manufacturers had returned to racing and found the stock appearance of NASCAR cars a better venue for marketing.
With all American drivers - as Indianapolis was getting more international - NASCAR seemed to catch the growing wave of parochialism in a country that was showing a waning interest in many international sports.