After three consecutive years of lifting its longstanding blackout (or without a way to enforce it), Indianapolis Motor Speedway president Doug Boles says the plans and infrastructure are in place to black out the live broadcast of the 107th running of the Indianapolis 500 to central Indiana race fans.
Last year, those not among the 325,000 that packed IMS’ 300 acres were able to watch Marcus Ericsson’s 500 win live via a premium subscription ($4.99 per month) to NBC’s Peacock streaming service. With that loophole available, NBC saw a 534% increase in its digital audience for the 500, with an average of 218,800 fans watching the race live via Peacock, NBCsports.com or the NBC Sports app across the entire broadcast (up from 34,500 in 2021).
A decades’ long rule:The saga of the Indy 500 TV blackout and its fascinating, quirky stronghold
From 2022:Mark Miles says local Peacock loophole ‘a one-off’ for 2022 500
As it has since 1950, with a couple recent exceptions, IMS continued its ban on the traditional broadcast of the race via local NBC affiliate WTHR in 2022, but in the months leading up to the race, NBC had not been able to put the necessary geofencing technology in place to prevent digital streaming of the race in central Indiana.
It’s, in essence, the same technology used, for example, by DirecTV NFL Sunday Ticket to prevent customers from using an app on a smart TV to watch an Indianapolis Colts game being shown live locally on CBS or Fox. As Penske Entertainment Corp. president and CEO Mark Miles told IndyStar last year, “(Geofencing) wasn’t initially part of (NBC’s) strategy when they launched (Peacock), but some time ago, they said they were working on it.”
Race fans who live in Canada aren’t able to subscribe to Peacock in order to watch IndyCar races on that platform but NBC hadn’t been able to tinker with the system to get it working properly over much smaller, specific area for last year’s 500.
“We could have nobody in the country see it on the streaming platform, or everybody,” Miles said last year. “So it’s important to us that people really understand this is a one-off, and next year, we’ll be in a position to apply the same policy, whether it’s traditional linear TV or Peacock.
“Our preference would be that everyone could see (the Indy 500) live everywhere, but because of the unique nature of the world’s biggest sporting event, in the local market, a delay is really important to us, so our policy hasn’t changed.”
IMS lifted the local live ban on the broadcast of the race in 2016 when it reached a rare, true sellout with an estimated crowd of 350,000 fans on race day. On May 6 that year, the track announced it had sold all of its reserved grandstand seats, and 19 days later, IMS cut-off general admission ticket sales at around 75,000 for the May 29 race eventually won rookie Alexander Rossi.
In 2020 and 2021, IMS lifted the local blackout of the live race broadcast with the COVID-19 pandemic either severely restricting (2021’s cap of 135,000 fans) or eliminating in-person attendance altogether (2020).
Boles told IndyStar this week that IMS came away with roughly 12,000 unsold grandstand seats of its 232,000 around the 2.5-mile oval last year, adding that this year’s ticket sales are outpacing 2022’s.
“Since the first 500 hours (after last year’s race the track pushes renewals), we’ve been up every single day,” Boles said. “I literally wake up every single day worried that sales are going to stop, but we’re about a tick over 1% up (on 2022), which may not seem like a lot, but when you talk about more than 300,000 people, that’s adding 3,000-4,000 people.”
That doesn’t mean, though that IMS just needs to outpace last year’s attendance by 12,000 to ensure a sellout crowd and lift the blackout. IMS sold its last reserved grandstand ticket in 2016 more than three weeks before the race and saw a run on general admission sales due to the realization that you wouldn’t be able to walk up to the ticket office at any time and buy a ticket for the historic 100th running.
Boles said such a crowd isn’t quite in the cards this May.
“But we may start to get back into that sellout conversation in the next couple years (at this pace),” Boles said.
Until then, central Indiana fans will have to either attend the race, listen to the IMS radio network or wait for the tape-delayed broadcast of the 500 that will air on local NBC affiliate WTHR Sunday evening.
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