GWC finishes coming to Indycar soon?

[cpthornman]

Besides, with 35 million+ watching the Daytona 500, which so often has a GWC, it's clear that the masses simply don't care. You can congratulate yourself for being better than the masses if you like. Sponsors don't care.

Still doesn't make it good or ok.

[cpthornman]

What does it say to you?

That the "want it now" generation has ruined pretty much anything entertainment these days.

[Gomer Simpson]

So what. Once they're tuned in they tune in until it's over (at least). Longer if there was a fight or some controversy.

Then we should mandate fights. That sounds like a pretty good idea.

I think you're dead wrong about GWC and ratings. The decline was coincidental, having much more to do with Jimmie Johnson and Kyle Busch.

Hey, I (and others on here) are only anecdotal evidence, but that's more than you've provided.

GWC= more races spending more minutes at their peak viewing level. which = a higher ratings average.

Wow, a whole 1-2 minutes it takes to run 2 laps??? Dang, in a 4 hour broadcast I bet that makes a massive impact on ratings!

Besides, with 35 million+ watching the Daytona 500, which so often has a GWC, it's clear that the masses simply don't care. You can congratulate yourself for being better than the masses if you like. Sponsors don't care.

Okay, so the masses are indifferent and the purists hate it, but in your logic that is a net positive?

[SoundMan360]

That the "want it now" generation has ruined pretty much anything entertainment these days.

Yeah... Americans.... meh...

[SoundMan360]

Then we should mandate fights. That sounds like a pretty good idea.

Hey, I (and others on here) are only anecdotal evidence, but that's more than you've provided.

Wow, a whole 1-2 minutes it takes to run 2 laps??? Dang, in a 4 hour broadcast I bet that makes a massive impact on ratings!

It's ok... I get it... not everybody is good at math. It's ok, you spell pretty well.

Okay, so the masses are indifferent and the purists hate it, but in your logic that is a net positive?

It's not a major calamity. It's a sign that race viewers, as a whole, really don't care that much about GWC. I think most fans would rather not have them, but once they see that the choice is either more or less racing, they are more than willing to accept them.

[Captain Spyro]

That the "want it now" generation has ruined pretty much anything entertainment these days.

I wouldn't go THAT far. Yeah, I don't share the taste of the majority of Americans, but alternatives do exist, and they will always exist.

[cpthornman]

I wouldn't go THAT far. Yeah, I don't share the taste of the majority of Americans, but alternatives do exist, and they will always exist.

Correct but thankfully we have the internet so you can find those alternatives without having to go too far out of your way to find them.

[Indy500Dude]

This sport seems hell-bent on driving away fans. The first Indycar race to add laps for a GWC finish will be my last Indycar race...

Mine too.

[TimmyZ1]

RB tends to listen to the fans. If there getting an overwhelmingly negative response to this then I have think there not going to move forward. Basically the same thing happened with the lucky dog rule. It was nuked very quickly once the opinions came rolling in.

I know there's certain posters who believe that anything NASCAR does that's successful we should try but they are 2 distinct fan bases and ICS should remember that.

One last thing, are we supposed to be getting on board starters next year? Because red flagging with 5 to go would make it a total ***** trying to restart 20 cars with just the safety crews

[Glenn]

Tells you about the average attention span of the casual fan.

You are absolutely correct. I started thinking about it during the Kentucky Derby broadcast. There was my wife who's never shown an interest in horse racing, waiting for the race and watching it and screaming. Same thing for the Preakness. I asked her why she doesn't do that for the 500 and she said, "what and watch it for 3 hours, I've got better things to do!"

[WSIndyFan]

One thing that I'm not sure has been mentioned, thought I did skim many of the nearly 5 pages... We have owners complaining about the prices of spare parts and we've pushed back aero kits because of cost. Do we really think owners are going to embrace this idea? Is the league going to say, OK, we won't put introduce aerokits, but we will introduce something that has the potential to add more wrecks, thus higher bills for you all? I don't see it. If anything, I don't see the league being healthy enough to introduce gimmicks that will likely make the teams absorb the expense.

[Cupfan]

Wow.
It seems that at every turn Indycar is presented a chance to follow that other series (you know, the successful, healthy series with fans, sponsors and ratings that you should be willing to die for), they will choose not to.
Make no mistake, American open wheel racing is dying a slow death. They've got to have decent ratings for more than one race a year. Nothing else matters, not even attendance. RB should be thinking more like Roger, Chip and Michael, good businessmen all.

To the "purists", here's a hint. The fans that IIRC should be worried about satisfying ain't on this board.

[Glenn]

Wow.
It seems that at every turn Indycar is presented a chance to follow that other series (you know, the successful, healthy series with fans, sponsors and ratings that you should be willing to die for), they will choose not to.
Make no mistake, American open wheel racing is dying a slow death. They've got to have decent ratings for more than one race a year. Nothing else matters, not even attendance. RB should be thinking more like Roger, Chip and Michael, good businessmen all.

To the "purists", here's a hint. The fans that IIRC should be worried about satisfying ain't on this board.

Extremely hard to argue with this logic, but I'm betting some people will!

[Grinder-Tank]

Extremely hard to argue with this logic, but I'm betting some people will!

I don't think copying NASCAR is the answer. I think coming up with a plan that works for IndyCar might be. I happen to like Mike Hull's red flag idea.

It's also a bit much to say the sport is dying a slow death. It's simply what it has been for a long time, a niche sport. It does not have to be as big as NASCAR. I wouldn't want it to get that big. It would have to be dumbed down to pablum, like NASCAR, and essentially the sport would have died a quick death even though they would continue to race and ratings went to Cup levels.

It's not that easy (simply copy NASCAR).

[Gomer Simpson]

It's ok... I get it... not everybody is good at math. It's ok, you spell pretty well.

Uh, okay. You take the green flag, run 1 lap. Then you get the white flag and run another lap. At the end of that lap you get the checkered flag. I don't think the math is that hard on this.

Let's go reeeeeeeaaaaaaaly long here and say that it takes 10 minutes to cleanup the debris that causes the yellow and to run the extra 2 laps. Let's also take the shortest of broadcasts you'll ever see for a NASCAR race; 2.5 hours. That 10 minutes accounts for an entire 6.6% of the broadcast. Oh my! Now lets take the high end of the ratings that an average NASCAR race would get; 5.0. Now let's be very generous and say that the ratings increase 50% during the final laps. That means we have a 5.0 for 140 minutes of the broadcast and a 7.5 for 10 minutes. That would bring the 5.0 rating up to 5.16, an entire .97% increase in ratings!

THAT is a fantasy-land, perfect storm scenario.

Applying that .97% increase to the high end of an INDYCAR races ratings at we go all the way from 1.0 to....

wait for it...







a little longer...







1.0097!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



OMG, how did somebody not think of this before?!?!?


Of course it would still get rounded down to a 1.0, but oh well.

[Sea Fury]

Wow.
It seems that at every turn Indycar is presented a chance to follow that other series (you know, the successful, healthy series with fans, sponsors and ratings that you should be willing to die for), they will choose not to.
Make no mistake, American open wheel racing is dying a slow death. They've got to have decent ratings for more than one race a year. Nothing else matters, not even attendance. RB should be thinking more like Roger, Chip and Michael, good businessmen all.

To the "purists", here's a hint. The fans that IIRC should be worried about satisfying ain't on this board.

Popularity does not equal quality.

[Glenn]

Popularity does not equal quality.

True, but Popularity does equal more Sponsorship Money which can then lead to higher Quality.

[ghost]

Popularity does not equal quality.

Maybe in your way of thinking... but popularity does equal butts in the seats and viewers at home, which is what the sponsors who pay for this sport care about.

[Sea Fury]

True, but Popularity does equal more Sponsorship Money which can then lead to higher Quality.

Not necessarily. Too often that leads to watering down the product and pandering.

[Glenn]

Not necessarily. Too often that leads to watering down the product and pandering.

Sure wish I knew what you were talking about?

[houstonracefan]

Wow.
It seems that at every turn Indycar is presented a chance to follow that other series (you know, the successful, healthy series with fans, sponsors and ratings that you should be willing to die for), they will choose not to.
Make no mistake, American open wheel racing is dying a slow death. They've got to have decent ratings for more than one race a year. Nothing else matters, not even attendance. RB should be thinking more like Roger, Chip and Michael, good businessmen all.

To the "purists", here's a hint. The fans that IIRC should be worried about satisfying ain't on this board.

or, maybe we should be taking cues from a series that is hundreds of times more successful than NASCAR... only that pays nearly 100 million for the championship and is worth BILLIONS of dollars, and happens to be the second most popular sport in the world

[Fro]

Bernard needs to come out and say "I want a X% increase in attendance and TV ratings in 2013 or else we're going to add GWC in 2014".

That'd be the kick in the rear the fanbase needs to start really promoting the sport.

[Muskie4041]

Bernard needs to come out and say "I want a X% increase in attendance and TV ratings in 2013 or else we're going to add GWC in 2014".

That'd be the kick in the rear the fanbase needs to start really promoting the sport.

Why should it be the fanbase's responsibility to promote the sport?

[Sea Fury]

Why should it be the fanbase's responsibility to promote the sport?

I agree it's not a responsibility....but it is a privilege.

[Turn13]

Why should it be the fanbase's responsibility to promote the sport?

It's not - it's a prerogative, for fans who would see it flourish.

It's also an inevitable end result of fans' interactions with their social networks. Folks will be favorably impressed or not - even if fans don't especially "promote". A personal endorsement - positive or negative - can occur in a number of indirect ways.

A series logo sticker, for example, can be a negative if it's on a POS. A third-person anecdote can be a positive one, if the first person is a reasonably impressive role model

[Gomer Simpson]

Wow.
It seems that at every turn Indycar is presented a chance to follow that other series (you know, the successful, healthy series with fans, sponsors and ratings that you should be willing to die for), they will choose not to.
Make no mistake, American open wheel racing is dying a slow death. They've got to have decent ratings for more than one race a year. Nothing else matters, not even attendance. RB should be thinking more like Roger, Chip and Michael, good businessmen all.

To the "purists", here's a hint. The fans that IIRC should be worried about satisfying ain't on this board.

Maybe in your way of thinking... but popularity does equal butts in the seats and viewers at home, which is what the sponsors who pay for this sport care about.

NASCAR's popularity came long before GWC was thought up and has only decreased since GWC was introduced. If we're going to be copying what made NASCAR popular than it might be a good idea to look at what actually made NASCAR popular.

[ajwest92]

In a word...NO.

[PenelopePitstop]

NASCAR's popularity came long before GWC was thought up and has only decreased since GWC was introduced. If we're going to be copying what made NASCAR popular than it might be a good idea to look at what actually made NASCAR popular.

Exactly.

GWC was created by NASCAR to appease a vocal group of rednecks in 2004:

April 26 – In the NASCAR Nextel Cup race at Talladega Superspeedway, Jeff Gordon won in a controversial ending where he passed NASCAR's most popular driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and the race ended under caution, causing fans to throw garbage onto the racetrack; Gordon then defiantly performed a victory "doughnut" over the garbage. The finish to the race caused NASCAR to institute the green-white-checker finish.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ents_in_sports

What is the demographic of the 'fans' who want G-W-C in INDYCAR?

[jandj]

If Joonyer had been in front when the yellow came out, not a single beer can would have hit the track and we probably wouldn't have G-W-C.
Yeah, it's pandering at it's finest.
Kind of like when a kid plays the fool at school, the teacher disciplines him, the parents complain, and the school board institutes a new program of "Getting in touch with the children's feelings".

[Turrell Sporano]

I like watching cars go around a race track.

Go back to NASCAR.

I bet you think Gerry Forsythe was "great for the sport," too.