MOTORSPORT: Gold Coast Indy's ugly US picture

Monday motorsport reportOctober 15, 2007

Indy's little US audience costing a hell of a lot
It's Gold Coast Indy week. It will be the 17th time this event has been held.

The reason it started in 1991 was to showcase the Gold Coast to an American television audience. That was in contrast to Australia's Formula 1 grand prix, initially in Adelaide and -- since the mid-90s -- in Melbourne, which is primarily for a European audience.

In its early days the Gold Coast Indy seemed to serve its purpose rather well. By that we mean it probably wasn't, comparatively, bad value for money. It was on network -- or free-to-air -- television in the US.

The CART (Championship Auto Racing Teams) series, then marketed under the IndyCar brand name, was a pretty strong series, with drivers like Emerson Fittipaldi, Nigel Mansell, Mario and Michael Andretti and Al Unser Jr.

These days, as Champ Car, the series is, sadly, only a shadow of its former self. A pedant would say it is not even the same series, as CART went bankrupt (although many of its assets were bought by Open Wheel Racing LLC, which runs Champ Car).

The series is struggling to survive in its home market, North America, and is trying -- with mixed success -- to expand elsewhere, in particular Europe and Asia.

Somewhat oddly, its Gold Coast round is hailed as virtually its marquee event, along with Long Beach in California.

Some of the Champ Car racing is quite good, but equally it must be said that the drivers are not of the calibre of yesteryear.

The best of them are Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais, a Frenchman who should clinch the series title for the fourth time this weekend before he heads to F1 next year; Australia's, indeed Queensland's, Will Power; and Robert Doornbos, a Dutchman who got to the verge of F1 and has won a couple of Champ Car races in his debut season.

The Gold Coast Indy has changed over the years. The V8 Supercars these days share equal billing with the Champ Cars, rather than the more traditional role of providing support races to an international feature.

The international open-wheeler race, though, and the telecast of it in the US must still be the primary reason for the event. But the Champ Car race, in itself, is just not as overwhelmingly the main reason any longer.

Our experience of the Gold Coast Indy has always been that it's a lot of fun. We haven't attended for the duration for some years, and the word we invariably hear when we inquire of others what it's like these days is 'feral'.

We translate that to mean that it has progressively gone down-market.

How it even retains the name Indy is a mystery. Indy is a derivation of Indianapolis, home of the Indianapolis 500 -- the world's biggest open-wheeler race.

The Indy 500 was part of the CART series until the mid-90s, but none of the Champ Car drivers or cars these days compete in that classic.

Instead the Indy 500 is the centerpiece of the rival Indy Racing League, and it's a wonder the people at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway haven't sought to crack down on the use of the term 'Indy' on the Gold Coast.

In any case, we read in the Gold Coast Bulletin last week that the Queensland government is contributing $12 million a year to this event.

Surely you wouldn't, or shouldn't, need to pay $12 million a year for a V8 Supercar round. Nothing like it.

So that money, $12 million, or the bulk of it, must still ostensibly be for staging the Champ Car round -- and the perceived benefit of the telecast of it into the US.

Because of its diminished status, Champ Car is unable to extract any TV rights for its races, so it buys time for its telecasts.

What it pays for the telecast of the Gold Coast race we don't know, but it would not be all of the $12 million the Queensland government is dropping on the event.

Our reading of the situation is that Open Wheel Racing LLC is getting about half of that $12 million -- i.e., $6 million -- as the fee for staging the Champ Car round.

That doesn't alter the fact, at least as reported by the Gold Coast Bulletin, that the total cost of the total event to the Queensland government is $12 million.

And, on that basis, the Indy is no longer anything like the value it once was. Indeed, US television audience figures we have obtained from RaceFax DotCom, an excellent US subscription service on open-wheeler motor sport, are disturbing.

We suspect that very few people in south-east Queensland know these figures, and any who do may not have been very keen in making them known to others.

They (the figures) tell us that up until 1997 the Gold Coast Indy's feature race was on network television in the US and had an audience of millions of households -- almost 2.4 million households in 1995, more than 1.8 million households in '96, and still 1.35 million in '97 as CART faded into bankruptcy and progressively lost its US audience.

However, since 1998 the Gold Coast race has mainly, indeed overwhelmingly (and possibly entirely), been screened on cable television in the US and the audience has shrunk.

While it was still almost 720,000 households in '98, it has dwindled over the years -- averaging just 128,400 households a year over the past five years.

The US audience for the race sunk as low as 92,000 households in 2005. It was also below 100,000 in 2003. Last year it was 125,000 households.

The dips and modest "peaks" over recent years apparently relate to whether the Gold Coast race has been screened live (at ungodly hours) or on delay in the US.

But if the Queensland government is tipping in $12 million a year to an event primarily for the telecast of its international open-wheeler race to the US market, on the figure of 125,000 households last year Queensland taxpayers were effectively subsiding the telecast into the US to the tune of $96 per US household reached.

Our recollection is that back in the mid-90s the Queensland government was contributing about $7 million a year to the Indy.

On the basis of $7 million a year and a US audience in 1995 of 2,390,000 households, the subsidy then by Queensland taxpayers was less than $3 per household.

The picture may have even been a little better (i.e., the effective cost per US household even lower) in the earlier 1990s, but unfortunately we don't have any numbers that far back at hand.

Indeed, we are led to believe such numbers don't even exist, which in itself if amazing in light of the professionalism CART exuded in the early '90s.

That's history, albeit unrecorded, but to have gone from less than $3 per household reached to almost $100 in a decade is alarming. And so is reaching 125,000 households in a country of 300 million people.

Even if the average number of viewers of the Gold Coast race in those 125,000 households was two, and we have some advice that that is probably a charitable estimate, the audience would be 250,000 in that country of 300 million.

Any thinking person would have to wonder at the wisdom of subsidising viewers to such an extent -- and continuing to do so. What value are Queensland generally, and the Gold Coast specifically, getting for a subsidy of $96 per US household watching?

As difficult as it is to quantify, there would be some benefit. The question is whether it is worth the money outlaid. Certainly in terms of TV viewers in the US, the whole idea for the race in the first place, that is very had to see.

For the record, here is the table of the US television figures for the Gold Coast Indy race that we obtained from RaceFax DotCom.

Year - US households reached
1995 - 2,390,000
1996 - 1,865,000                   
1997 - 1,351,000                   
1998 - 718,000                   
1999 - 445,000                   
2000 - 576,000                   
2001 - 382,000                   
2002 - 118,000                   
2003 - 97,000                   
2004 - 210,000                   
2005 - 92,000                   
2006 - 125,000                   

Oz F1's US picture not a lot prettier
While on the matter of the US audience for international races in Australia, we can point out that the figures for Melbourne's Australian F1 grand prix aren't too flash either -- although they dwarf those for the Champ Car race in the past three years.

NASCAR is, of course, the predominant form of racing Americans prefer, by a long way, and that country won't even have its own F1 GP next year.

Again, courtesy of Racefax DotCom, here are the numbers of US households that have watched the Oz GP (on cable) since 2005, with the extra detail of a split between the live telecast and the subsequent replay of the race.

Year - US households reached - Live - Replay  
2005 - 536,000 - 297,000 - 239,000
2006 - 588,000 - 259,000 - 329,000
2007 - 402,000 - 305,000 - 97,000

Lots of other heat in Gold Coast air
No doubt our little world will be awash with "news" or announcements about or around the Gold Coast Indy this week.

A lot of it will be puffery, but keeping an eye on the Gold Coast Bulletin these past few days we've already gleaned a few things.

Among them:
• Wild storms are predicted for the Gold Coast this week, forcing officials to come up with a contingency plan if wet weather hampers the race start.
• The Queensland government wants to secure the Indy race until 2011 once the Champ Car bosses arrive in Surfers' Paradise.
• V8 Supercars Australia is lining up for a greater slice of the Indy financial pie, annoyed that the Champ Car fraternity are still commanding a reputed $6 million annual fee despite the greatly diminished interest in that category.
• Speculation that the 12-year "marriage" of sports marketing company International Management Group (IMG) and the Gold Coast Motor Events Company (GCMEC) in running the Indy is faltering.

On the fourth point, Indy chairman Terry Mackenroth said at the weekend:

"I cannot understand where all the rumour and speculation has been circulated from and take offence to such accusations of instability in regards to Australia's number one motorsport spectacular.

"The future of our current management structure, which has yielded countless major successes over the past decade, is in good hands.

"The Queensland government and IMG have more recently exchanged letters of intent to continue our partnership and only some of the finer details of the agreement are still being worked through at the moment.

"Our current agreement will take us through to the 2008 event and we expect to cement a formal arrangement between the Queensland government and our event partners IMG to take us through another five-year contractual period up to and inclusive of the 2013 event."
Indy general manager, IMG's Greg Hooton, says the Queensland government, via GCMEC, has been "a fantastic partner" in the event with IMG.

The Gold Coast Bulletin had reported last week that the relationship had "cooled" and that the Queensland government had explored "other managerial alternatives".

$13m demand for Perth V8 race
We've spotted an interesting report out of Western Australia regarding the future of V8 Supercar racing there.

It's on The West Australian newspaper's website, and is headed 'V8 organisers seek $13m backing'. Here are the first four sentences of the report:
"The State (i.e. WA) government will be asked to foot a one-off $13 million bill and pay a further $3 million in annual costs when the company behind V8 Supercars next week makes a fresh pitch to stage the Perth round of the championship in the heart of the city.

"V8 Supercars Australia boss Wayne Cattach said yesterday he would make it clear to EventsCorp that it would have to back the event or V8 Supercars would be lost to the state.

"He has ruled out Wanneroo Raceway after next year's race. Proponents of the city event, which has been earmarked to start in 2010, said 18 months ago that the government would need to contribute only between $5 million and $10 million but Mr Cattach said soaring construction costs had pushed that out substantially."

Now people running businesses are entitled to negotiate the best deals they can, within the laws of the land. But we wonder today just where this notion that governments should be underwriting motor racing is headed.

The Victorian government is dropping an ever-increasing bundle on Melbourne's F1 GP, perhaps more than $30 million this year, and the Queensland government is reportedly contributing $12 million a year to the Gold Coast Indy.

The latest figure we've seen on the concept of a V8 Supercar street race in Townsville is a $41 million spend, with the bulk of that seemingly already committed by the Queensland government and Townsville city council -- with the lobbyists hoping the final $10 million is going to shake loose from the federal coffers during the election campaign that's just officially begun.

On top of the Townsville proposal there is this push for a street race -- and government funding -- in Perth. And V8 Supercars Australia chairman Tony Cochrane apparently still harbours hopes of getting up a race at Sydney's Homebush Olympic precinct, again with government -- i.e., taxpayer -- dollars.

Good luck to those chasing the money if they can get it, but is it really the role of governments to be bankrolling such things?

Loeb v. Gronholm -- a grand battle
Perhaps just as the F1 world championship will be decided at the final round in Brazil next Monday morning, Australian time, the world rally championship is headed for an enthralling climax.

Frenchman Sebastien Loeb has won two rounds in little more than a week -- the French round on the island of Corsica at the weekend, after the previous week's success at Catalunya in Spain -- and is now just four points behind Finn Marcus Gronholm with three rounds remaining.

Gronholm's manufacturer, Ford, has a stronger grip on the title, though, with a 28-point lead over Citroen, for which Loeb drives.

Loeb's latest victory was his third in a row on Corsica, his seventh this year, and the 35th of his WRC career -- a record. He was fastest on nine of the 16 stages.

Gronholm, 39 and set to retire at the end of this season, was relieved to take second place in Corsica.

"It is only two points (Loeb has made up with this latest victory)," Gronholm says.

But less than two weeks ago the gap was 10 points.

Subaru's Norwegian former world champion, Petter Solberg, and Australian Chris Atkinson were fifth and sixth in Corsica as the Impreza again struggled on asphalt.

Solberg complained of a "massive vibration" at the end, while Atkinson was more than a minute behind him with understeer and brake problems -- but the three points he earned move him up to sixth in the drivers' championship.

The next round of the series is in Japan at the end of the month.

Incidentally, still no proper announcements about the plans for a revived Rally Australia in south-east Queensland next year -- and the proposed event is now only 11 months away!

World rally drivers' championship after 13 of 16 rounds -- Marcus Gronholm (Ford Focus RS) 104 points, Sebastien Loeb (Citroen C4) 100, Mikko Hirvonen (Ford Focus RS) 74, Daniel Sordo (Citroen C4) 45, Petter Solberg (Subaru Impreza) 38, Chris Atkinson (Subaru Impreza) 29, Henning Solberg (Ford Focus) 28, Jari-Matti Latvala (Ford Focus) 24, Francois Duval (Citroen Xsara) 12, Toni Gardemeister (Citroen Xsara) 10, Jan Kopecky (Skoda Fabia) 10, Daniel Carlsson (Citroen Xsara) 9, Manfred Stohl (Citroen Xsara) 9.

World rally manufacturers' championship -- BP Ford WRT 179 points, Citroen Total WRT 147, Subaru WRT 71, Stobart M-Sport Ford RT 64, OMV Kronos Citroen WRT 39, Munchi's Ford WRT 6.

In A1 Australia is D minus
No joy for Australia at the second round of the A1 Grand Prix series at Brno in the Czech Republic -- more so as New Zealand won it.

Australia's Ian Dyk qualified 19th of 22, only completed three laps of the sprint race, and finished 13th -- and more than a minute behind Kiwi Jonny Reid -- in the longer feature race.

Reid won the sprint by almost six seconds from Britain's Robbie Kerr, followed by Ireland's Adam Carroll, South Africa's Adrian Zaugg, Holland's Jeroen Bleekemolen and Frenchman Nicolas Lapierre.

In the feature Reid took the chequered flag more than seven seconds ahead of Bleekemolen, with Switzerland's Neel Jani third, followed by China's Congfu Cheng, Lapierre and Carroll.

Gordon on target for high five
Jeff Gordon is on course for a fifth title in NASCAR's premier division, the Nextel Cup, after winning the weekend's round at Charlotte, North Carolina.

Gordon's 0.579-second victory over fellow Chevrolet driver Clint Bowyer was the 81st of his Cup career, his second straight and his sixth this season.

However, it was Gordon's first win at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Charlotte since 1999 and the first time in three years he has even finished a race there.

Gordon has taken a 68-point lead over Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jimmie Johnson at the halfway point of what is called The Chase -- the final rounds to the title.

In the secondary Busch series round at Charlotte, Australia's Marcos Ambrose qualifed 18th but the right front tyre on his Ford Fusion went down on lap 27 of the 200-lap race, sending him into the wall.

"We really wanted to have a strong finish to this year and this is not the way to do it," Ambrose says. "At the last two races we've had tyres go down leading to contact with the wall. We need to take it to another level."

Ambrose was classified 40th at Charlotte and has dropped to ninth in the series points.

Busch drivers and teams now have a week off before a run of four races to end the season, starting at Memphis, Tennessee.

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