INDIANAPOLIS — In anticipation of an eventual sellout of the reserved grandstand tickets for this year’s Indianapolis 500 by the end of Monday’s practice, if not before, Penske Entertainment officials have elected to lift the Central Indiana blackout of the live broadcast of the 500, Penske Entertainment president and CEO Mark Miles and series and Indianapolis Motor Speedway president Doug Boles announced Friday morning.
According to a release from IMS, reserved grandstand tickets for the May 25 race are still available, but it has become abundantly clear that a sellout of those tickets — of which there are more than 230,000 around the Racing Capital of the World — will take place within a matter of days, with such a small number of tickets left that no severe downturn in the race day weather forecast could halt sales, as took place a year ago with IMS just a few thousand short of a sellout.
IMS says that general admission ticket sales will still be available for race viewing in the infield throughout race day morning, and Snake Pit wristbands (which must be paired with a general admission ticket) also remain available, but all grandstand seats and hospitality suites “will be completely filled.”
“This year, the greatest race on Earth will host one of its biggest and most memorable crowds in many decades,” Miles said in a release. “This is a terrific showcase for the IndyCar series and a great milestone to supercharge our relationship with Fox Sports. It is also absolutely a fitting tribute to the continued leadership and investment of Roger Penske.”
Buy tickets for the 109th Indy 500
Added Boles: “The sheer size and scale of this crowd is going to be massive and will offer an epic backdrop for the very first Indy 500 on Fox. The 109th Running will be a full-scale, nonstop spectacle that draws the eyes of the world to Speedway, Ind.”
The grandstand sellout has long been expected, with reserved seats for this year’s edition of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing trending toward being sold out by qualifying weekend for several months. At the 100-day mark until this year’s 500, Boles told IndyStar that the track had sold roughly 8,200 more tickets than at that point in the race’s leadup a year ago, when only terrible weather forecasts for race day on race week stopped ticket sales from reaching the presumed grandstand sellout IMS had been on track for. At the Indy 500 open test April 23, Boles told IndyStar that IMS had fewer than 10,000 grandstand tickets left to sell for this year’s race and was between 8,500 and 9,000 tickets ahead of their 2024 pace.
This year’s race will be the eighth time local 500 fans have been able to watch it live from somewhere other than inside the venue. Those first two opportunities came in 1949 and 1950, but not until IMS’s complete sellout, to the point where the track even shutoff general admission ticket sales four days before the race, in 2016 was the race broadcast live in Central Indiana. The blackout was again lifted for the COVID-19 pandemic-altered 2020 race held in August when no fans were allowed to attend and again in 2021 when only 135,000 fans were permitted to attend.
In 2022, NBC did not have the proper technology in place to geo-block viewing of the race locally live by Peacock premium subscribers, allowing for a loophole for local race fans. The Central Indiana live broadcast blackout of the 500 was fully back in place in 2023, and it was set to be again in 2024 before IMS announced during the race’s four-hour rain delay that it would lift the blackout due to the extreme schedule change.
Get IndyStar’s motorsports coverage sent directly to your inbox with the Motorsports newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IMS lifts blackout of Indy 500 ahead of expected grandstand sellout
Reporting by Nathan Brown, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
