Indy Racing League Embraces "Niche Strategy" for 2007

Note to the humorless. Everything below is satire. Stuff made up in order to express an opinion.

The Indy Racing League officials Tuesday confirmed they are abandoning their quest for mass appeal and instead "going after targeted, incredibly tiny and potentially somewhat profitable" audiences.

"We've tried filling barns like Texas Motor Speedway and who are we kidding?" said an Indy Racing League official who asked not to be named. "No matter how many posters of Danica we put up around town we're not going to fill that place. So we decided to do some very target marketing."

For example, an internal IRL memo obtained by pressdog cites research indicating "97% of all American race fans would rather undergo unmedicated dental surgery than watch a street/road race."

"Where others would see a negative -- street/road races are wildly unpopular with a huge majority of American fans -- we saw opportunity," said an IRL insider. "Those three percent who would choose watching a road race over unmedicated dental surgery, they represent tens of hundreds of dollars in disposable income that we hope will be spent on the sponsors who pay millions to be on our cars."

Internal IRL memos also indicate that the league has launched "Operation Key Audiences," the code name for offering races that appeal to key audiences who support the league.

"We got St. Petersburg for the Andrettis, Belle Isle for Roger Penske and Mid-Ohio for Honda," said a league source. "We're in preliminary discussions to race around Chip Ganassi's private residence, perhaps on one of his children's birthdays, but that probably won't happen until 2008."

League officials justified Operation Key Audiences by saying "Andretti, Penske, Honda -- those three groups make up about 76% of the non-George Family revenue for the IRL right now, so it's a good move to keep them happy."

League officials were unconcerned that huge sections of the IRL's already dwindling fan base would rather "hit themselves in the foot repeatedly with a hammer" rather than watch more road racing.

In a related move, the league indicated they were working toward a marketing approach that seems to work for public lotteries. Such a model would ask fans to watch every race on the extremely remote chance that their favorite driver might actually win.

"OK, sure, if you're a fan of a driver like, say, Buddy Rice, you're probably going to get hit by lightning before he wins," said yet another insider. "But what if he does win and you're not watching? You'd totally be kicking yourself. Look at last year. By the third race it was apparent Penske and Ganassi were going to win virtually every race. But suckers still tuned in every time to see if by some fluke chance someone else might win. We figure we can do that for at least another year before everyone gets sick of watching the same guys win all the time."

Elsewhere in open-wheel racing, the Champ Car World Series announced that, thanks to its aggressive cost-cutting measures including the new Panoz DP01 chassis, sponsors for their series will now see a return on investment of negative 40%, which is up dramatically from the negative 60% ROI of recent years.

Don't miss the pressdog! Sign up to be notified when this blog is updated (usually once or twice a week). Go to the home page and use the form at the top right. The pressdog mailing list is double secret and won't be sold, leased, loaned or even spoken of in public.