Thursday, December 27, 2012

A Shift in IndyCar's Demographics is Coming

It may be many months away, but as a recently fired IndyCar CEO, Randy Bernard, said from afar on Twitter, the biggest shift in IndyCar demographics is coming:



I sent the above video link to my sister who then showed it to my two nephews both under 10. Result, they now really want to see it. I must note I just sent a link, so I did nothing to convince them or say anything to them, they made their own opinions. Lets state something now, even if the impact of Turbo is minor, it will in fact still be the biggest single drop in IndyCar demographics ever.  

More importantly its worth noting that the trailer on YouTube already has over 677,000 views. Minus crash videos, does anyone know of an IndyCar video that has a number of views that high? The answer is none.

Go on YouTube, search "indycar" and sort results by # of views. The hot wheels stunt at the Indy 500 is in the top five with 13 million views but it's not really indycar related.

In fact you have to go all the way to Page 4 before you get a non-crash video (Wheldon, Brack, Marcello, Brayton, Conway, Zanardi etc.). Down on page 4 of most watched is JR Hildebrand doing a lap of Sonoma with a GoPro (900k views), which we can probably all agree has more to do with GoPro, which is why they are a great sponsor/partner. 



The next highest non-crash video = Danica/Milka fighting in pits (700k views)

Keep going, Simona crash fire, Pace Car crashing at start of 500, Servia crash at Laguna Seca, Mansell/Vitollo car stacking (300k views) .... you get the point, crazy as it seems...

In fact, you have to go all the way to Page 7 before you get a non-crash video, drumroll please...

Will Power Extinguishes Engine Fire at Sebring Test (290k views)


...and right behind it

1996 CART Laguna Seca - "The Pass" (275k views)


Turbo's trailer in just a little over a week has twice as many views as "The Pass," the seemingly holy grail of IndyCar 'big play' videos.  

Plus I'm sure the demographics for the turbo video are much lower and more spread out that just racing fans  = good thing for IndyCar. More than anything It means kids buying Turbo toys, which while it will include a snail will most likely include little IndyCars they will race around the "tracks" of their living room carpets. It should also means parents of those kids will learn of the movie and when some random friend says "wanna go to an IndyCar race?" they'll at least know whats being talked about.

And that is a good thing.

A better thing that many may not have seen in the initial news release about the movie is this tidbit:
"Little else is known about the movie but DreamWorks Animation thinks it’s going to be huge (an animated series is already in the works, presumably to air on Cartoon Network)"

This is not Driven folks, and its not a one-off mini-splash, and that is good news for IndyCar, its drivers, teams and fans.

1 comment:

The Speedgeek said...

Very, very interesting. I can forsee a GBS writers/offspring movie theater trip in the offing come July (or August, or whenever the release is). Well, at least for those of us who have offspring who can focus on something for an hour or so.