Will the Indy 500 soon be called the 'Izod Indianapolis 500?'

The Indy Racing League is holding a press conference today in Indianapolis to announce that the premium clothing company Izod (a subsidiary of the Phillips-Van Heusen Corp.) has signed a five-year deal worth $50 million to be title sponsor of the championship that from now on will be called the Izod IndyCar Series.

So does this mean that the Indianapolis 500 is going to be called the Izod Indianapolis 500?

Because, for the life of me, I can’t get it through my head how Izod or anybody else can figure the Indy Car series by itself to be worth that kind of money.

Of course, we all know that the only reason anybody sponsors anything in the IRL is because of the “500,” which remains (except perhaps for the Grand Prix of Monaco) the world’s most famous race. They still pack close to 300,000 people into the old Brickyard each year on the last Sunday in May and millions of people who could care less about car racing still tune in to watch it on TV.

So there’s a return on investment by being involved in that race.

But other than Indy, the ROI in Indy Car is about zilch. There might be a decent crowd at a couple of races – Long Beach comes to mind – but if you ever want to go to a car race and have your pick of just about any seat in the house then the IRL is just the ticket.

And except for three or four races on ABC, nobody watches that series on TV in the U.S., either, because the IRL has a contract with a little-known, all-sports network called Versus and it has been shown time and again that more people watch reruns of poker games at 2 in the morning than tune in to watch live-and-in-colour Indy Car racing in the afternoon on Versus.

So there’s got to be more to the Izod deal than immediately meets the eye.

Over the years, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway has let commerce get in the way of tradition. The infield pagoda was the first thing to be sold off when Bombardier bought naming rights to it. And Allstate Insurance has been part of the title name of the Brickyard 400 NASCAR race in recent years.

There were suggestions that Bombardier, Allstate and others had tried to purchase naming rights to the Greatest Spectacle in Racing but chairman of the board Mari Hulman George (daughter of the Speedway’s saviour, Tony Hulman) would simply not hear of it.

 But with the economy in the dumpster and the ongoing Hulman-George family feud threatening the stability of that institution (Mari’s son Tony George was forced to step down as president of the IRL and the Speedway in recent months because of the enormous amounts of money spent in recent years to prop up the racing league and to fight the war with the Champ Car World Series), it’s possible that all bets are now off the table.

The Izod Indianapolis 500 – or a variation, such as the Indianapolis 500 presented by Izod – is a distinct possibility. Don’t  be surprised if it happens. 

Comments

[Bill Taylor]

Better that (marginally, anyway) than the Disney Indy: "Ladies, gentlemen and dwarves, start your engines....."