Indianapolis Motor Speedway is hitting the market with new corporate sponsorship packages to extract more value from the sprawling venue and the Indianapolis 500.
Rod Davis, chief revenue officer of track owner Hulman & Co., said that after this year’s Indy 500, IMS leadership brainstormed on how to generate more revenue and add activation. That included ways to get the myriad Indiana-based business-to-business companies, that may only buy suite tickets for the 500, more involved with the facility and its top events.
IMS will start pitching three packages this week: a “Month of May” package with assets spread around the month of the Indy 500; a yearlong package with assets spread throughout the year (but with fewer assets during May); and a package that will identify unsponsored areas of the venue to which a company may want to buy naming rights.
“We don’t have a lot of consumer companies here; of the top 100 private and public companies in Indiana, there’s a fair number that aren’t traditional sponsors, but we know there’s an interest in a relationship,” Davis said. “[So the idea was], ‘How do we take Indiana companies, acknowledge the B2B aspect they’re in, take the experiential relationships in motorsports and huge amount of noise we make in the month of May, and package that in a way where we can have people around the state of Indiana participate with us?”
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The speedway wants to get Indiana business-to-business companies more involved in events.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
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The May package will cost in the high six to low seven figures, with assets mainly based around tickets, hospitality and experiential elements, plus some branding. It will be spread throughout the IndyCar Grand Prix race, Carb Day, the 500 itself and the victory banquet. Assets could include co-branding on advertising, unique access such as private pit tours or waving the green flag during a practice, and signage on prime areas such as the track’s scoring pylon.
Davis said he’s not putting a firm number on the amount of the May packages the venue will sell, but it could be as few as two or three. IMS executives originally envisioned the package being tailored to Indiana-based companies specifically, but brands from other states can buy it.
The lower-cost, yearlong package effectively will take some of the assets from the May package and spread them throughout the year. IMS’s major events on top of the 500 include NASCAR’s Brickyard 400, the Red Bull Air Race and the holiday lights show.
The third package will depend on a prospect’s desires and the areas of the venue they may want to sponsor. Examples could include the various gates around the venue, video boards, the media center, tunnels and the pagoda plaza in the infield. Prices of these assets would vary, Davis said.
Davis said that while some of the assets in the new packages are sometimes included in IMS’s official sponsor programs with the likes of Chevrolet and Sunoco, those official sponsor packages are more tailored toward having consumer-facing assets and activation areas. The new deals are more focused on B2B companies.
“Think of it more as community-based assets,” Davis said of the new packages. “There is some branding and signage at the facility, but … we’re not giving away something we’re selling to someone else.”
Davis acknowledged that overall revenue is down in 2017, coming off a historic year in 2016 that featured the 100th running of the 500, which drew 350,000 spectators. This year’s event drew closer to 300,000.
Davis said the latest moves are all about providing new opportunities for potential partners. “We have some very significant companies in our state, and we’re simply looking to have conversations with them that we’ve never had before.”
