Indycar News & Rumors.

[chunterer]

The Palou affair, then Malukas getting shafted and now Pourchaire?

All this jerking around back and forth. What sort of messaging does this send out to the paddock and the wider motorsport world?

Pourchaire cancelled his Superformula contract to take the AMSP drive fgs!

Is there some money issues looming at the team or something?

So what will likes of Pato, Rossi think about all this?

[broadrun96]

Well there was some discussion of Malukas training outside of their regime and was talked to about it. And that happens when you break a deal. And if you believe some of the Twitter stories Arrow is leaving at the end of the deal, I've seen this off season of after 25. Siegel has more connections to funding but his family isn't paying out the nose to put things on the car but I'm sure they're chipping in something. Theo brought nothing from what it appears, but apparently F1 teams were interested still and multiple teams in Indy have already called him

[NaBUru38]

McLaren swaps drivers like tissues

[Yannick]

And now on to the Boogity where other sports are king that see themselves as direct competitors to IndyCar for attention of viewers. I hope this deal is better than the Motorsport Games deal.

The lack of date equity for Laguna and Gateway is weird because shifting events around to different months has usually resulted in the events leaving sooner or later. But there is not much you can do when the new TV partner asks for it, is there?
Also, despite Thermal becoming a full round, the gaps in the schedule are still there and, as my forespeakers have said, ending in August is weird. Maybe, that opens up the schedules of some IndyCar drivers to make guest appearances in Cup races later in the year when team orders in NASCAR promote Chase participants.
Yet, we know little on how worse off the new offer from the departing broadcast partner has been.

The recent driver change at AMSP is a surprise indeed. Here's hoping things don't go Askew. Regarding Askew himself, here's hoping he is doing well whatever he is doing these days.

[broadrun96]

I need people to understand OTA is NFL/NCAA after Labor Day and the new deal was premised on being ALL OTA coverage. Thus you do NOT schedule after that weekend. Most weekends a third to half of the population numbers can be estimated to tune in for some football game, this number does have some double counting in it but they play from noon to around 3 am Eastern on Sat and 1-midnight on Sundays. Fox is a bigger college partner and growing with more games each day, and FS1/2 are crammed with games from noon-3am already so Indy would be lucky to be on the app and even then buried in football options. There are 70 games the first Saturday of the season with another 25 Thurs and Fri. Nearly all of those are broadcast in some manner, have to remember it's not just TV time but crews and production equipment. Come Sundays the NFL has 1 and 430 matches that cover the entirety of the country or folks watch the NFL provided update channel across the league, each of those games draw more for bad matches than a good Indy 500 does. Yes, Fox may only have an early or late game for some but they will have at least 3 games at each time slot so Indy cannot be a national broadcast. It's simple economics and they want more eyeballs on it, an early end to the schedule isn't a loss when they can guarantee OTA to advertisers for all rounds. They are the ONLY racing series in the US to have all of their races free to view.

Laguna moves as much for TV as trying to get the race in around the track and weather. It's moved multiple times and is not at risk of being removed with the work the track has had done and the management fighting, it is their headline event.

No one is going from an Indy ride to jump in a Cup car late in the season, there's no plus for anyone there. Only team crossover is Ganassi and Penske, none of their drivers are brimming with Cup experience, or publicly noted desire.

[Yannick]

Thanks for the reply. Little did I know that NFL is that huge. Sounds like TV ratings for NFL games must be in the double digits easily.
That raises the question: How did CART manage to keep their late-season events alive in the 90s when the racing season went on until the end of October?

[broadrun96]

It’s easily in to the double digits, individual games draw 25 million views and broadcast windows can draw 20 million consistently. CART had the advantage of MUCH lower NFL ratings of the day and tobacco money for team funding. Look at old liveries vs now, how many times did teams run different main sponsors in a year? Now Penske, Ganassi and Andretti all run varying cars by week now, Penske even tweeted out the liveries of the week Tuesday for Laguna. Even IMSA got fat piles of cash from one of the most profitable businesses of all time, loss of that money hurt racing of all series more than other sports. Now IMSA runs either commercial factory partners, driver partners or pay drivers and even major Indy teams need driver partners. Coke used to be all over racing and now only occasionally runs in series and spreads money across a group of Cup drivers instead of a single car.

College football outside of championship/bowl games can pull 8-10 million but can have 5 of those games each Saturday. Not as big an animal but still high in the ratings each week. Indy drew 5 million for the biggest event of the year for comparison