Oilpressure

This past Friday morning, I was going through my Twitter Feed while eating breakfast – my usual routine each morning trying to catch up on any overnight racing news. I saw an item re-tweeted by someone I follow, who has a habit of re-tweeting everything he comes across. Many times, his re-tweets are the very first of late-breaking news; but every now and then, he will send out something that proves to be totally false.

I looked at his re-tweet that originally caught my eye due to how outrageous it sounded. It was from a source I had never heard of and sounded a little bogus, so I completely ignored it as internet drivel. Later that afternoon Marshall Pruett of Racer.com was reporting the same exact information, so I realized what I had scoffed at earlier was actually true.

What was so outlandish that I immediately considered it false? IndyCar had set a $2,000 price tag on General Admission tickets to the exhibition race at The Thermal Club next March.

Are we now in The Twilight Zone? Have we finally entered the realm where the average fan is not only priced out of attending events, they are completely disregarded?

I realize that there is only room to accommodate roughly 5,000 fans – but that equates to $10 Million. That seems a little exorbitant to me.

Those ticket prices are in the range of the going rate for Super Bowl tickets or next month’s Formula One race in Las Vegas, which has been used as the poster event for fan gouging.

As a comical footnote, lunch is provided to all ticket holders for all three days. For that kind of money, they should provide free hookers.

This is beyond a slippery slope. I’d say we’ve gone over the cliff. Unfortunately, this could be a sign of things to come – not only in motor racing, but sports in general. As we get deeper into the streaming age, and consumers move further away from cable – sports entities will eventually start using drastic measures to generate the revenue they’ve grown accustomed to for decades.

When Cable TV was king, non-sports fans were being charged a fairly significant sum that went to ESPN and the networks. It was buried deep into all of those mysterious fees that appeared on your cable bill every month. Just like I wasn’t a fan of paying for the Hallmark Channel, Oxygen, QVC or other channels I never watched, many cable consumers that never once tuned into ESPN or SEC Network, resented being charged to fund those channels.

Now that consumers are moving away from cable, sports entities such as the NFL, College Football, NASCAR or IndyCar have no desire to see their revenue clipped in any way. With streaming becoming the norm, fans of those sports will be footing the bill directly if they want to consume their product – either through higher streaming fees or higher ticket prices at the gate.

And I’m not talking about your normal two to three dollar ticket increase. I’m talking massive increases to make up the revenues they are losing through the demise of cable. Do you really think NBC can recoup everything they lost from the death of cable, by charging $4.99 per month for Peacock? When cable goes away completely, expect massive streaming fees, now that your non-sports loving next door neighbor is no longer footing the bill so that your favorite NFL team can sign a premier edge-rusher for $58 Million.

Over the years, I’ve checked many boxes off of my sports-related bucket list, but I still have several more things I’d like to do before I assume room-temperature. One of those is to attend a Super Bowl in-person, preferably with the Tennessee Titans as one of the two teams. Neither is likely to happen anytime soon. One is because the Titans seemed to be content with mediocrity, and the other is because regular football fans have been priced out of the market for Super Bowl tickets. It is now an event for the rich and famous, or a corporate event where CEOs rub elbows and discuss their golf game. They are much more comfortable discussing a balance sheet, than they are the intricacies of the 3-4 defense.

I’m afraid those in attendance at The Thermal Club will be much the same crowd. The restructuring of their corporate organizational chart, or their 401(k) is a lot more likely topic of discussion, than the disparity of results in 2023 of Rahal Letterman Lanigan on road/street courses versus ovals; or if Arrow McLaren made the right move to jettison Felix Rosenqvist for David Malukas. Conversations you hear among fans at Road America and Gateway will probably be quite different from what you might overhear fromm ticket-holders at The Thermal Club.

Quite honestly, I’m hoping that these ticket prices were set by the members of The Thermal Club, simply to keep the riff-raff out of their gated community. Have you seen the infield at Indianapolis immediately after the 500? Fans paying $50 for general admission are more likely to trash the grounds. We don’t live in a gated community, but I wouldn’t want any of that in my neighborhood on any given weekend.

Of course, having money doesn’t exempt anyone from bad manners. Eagles guitarist Joe Walsh could certainly afford to attend the IndyCar race at The Thermal Club; but the King of Hotel Room Trashing could make the pristine grounds look like a war zone in a matter of minutes. If Thermal Club members voted to set that price as a condition for letting strangers inside their walls, I almost couldn’t blame them.

Short of that, however, it baffles me how such a lofty price tag could be placed on tickets for an exhibition race that means nothing in the standings. It’s like the NFL charging Super Bowl prices for the Hall of Fame game in early August, where the only goal of either team is to get through the game uninjured.

My hope is that this is a one-time aberration, and this in no way is a sign of things to come in motorsports or sports in general. If it is, all bets are off.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on October 23, 2023 at 4:04 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.