Doyel: Absurd Indy 500 television blackout continues

The Indianapolis 500 has a new scoreboard, new video boards, great concerts, glamorous campouts called glamping. This place loves you, Indianapolis.

Just not enough to let you watch the race on live television.

So I guess that means the Indy 500 loves Indianapolis less than it loves Muncie, because they can watch the race live in Muncie. They can watch it in Fort Wayne, too. And Terre Haute. Lafayette. South Bend? Oh, the Indy 500 loves itself some South Bend. Race-watching parties are happening in bars up there.

You can watch the Indy 500 on live TV just about anywhere in the world, and everywhere in America. Everywhere but this one spot that we — and the Indy 500 — call home.

Since 1951, it's been blacked out in the Indianapolis area, which I realize isn't news to most of you. But you do realize that's preposterous, yes? The blackout is all about business and attendance and butts in the seats, understood, but it's preposterous.

Because you're funding this party.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway asked the state to authorize $100 million in bonds in 2013, and Gov. Mike Pence approved the deal for IMS without getting a concession that would make so much sense:

You can have our help, IMS.

But you have to let us watch the race on live TV.

You know, like they'll be doing in Ohio and Illinois and … well, let's not list the 49 states that can watch the race anywhere within their borders. Or the 213 countries that can watch it. Here's how unseemly this is. The folks at IMS are bragging about the televised reach of this race. Where do you think I got these numbers, about the 213 countries televising the Indy 500 with a reach of 292 million people worldwide? From the IMS website!

That's a page they'd probably rather the locals not look at. So do yourself a favor, Indianapolis. Look at it. See how many people around the globe can do what you cannot do Sunday at noon – watch the race you've been helping fund indirectly since 1949, and directly since 2013 when Gov. Pence passed House Enrolled Act 1544. At $5 million a year it's a 20-year deal through 2033. IMS is paying $2 million a year toward the bonds, a pennies-on-the-dollar deal offset by taxes captured on business growth in the Motorsports Investment District around Speedway and by a race-day ticket tax.

Now look, IMS has its side to the story, and it has legs. IMS President Doug Boles notes that the $100 million is a loan, not a gift, one that will be repaid whether the district surrounding the speedway generates the tax revenue or not. He also notes that the Indy 500 has brought visitors to the region for a century, and those visitors have spent money that IMS has never seen.

"We haven't asked for a thing in 100 years," Boles was telling me Friday from Carb Day, "and every time we put a head in a hotel bed or someone buys a dinner downtown, that money goes to pay for Lucas Oil Field and other things."

Point taken. IMS has done so much for us here. Two sides to this story? There are. And some locals are on the IMS side. I spent Thursday on the phone with local Indy 500 fans, and most of them were OK with the race being blacked out. Don't misunderstand, they'd watch it live if they could, but they can't. So they go, or they listen on radio, or in the case of folks like J.P. LaFrance of Noblesville, they drive a long way away to watch it. LaFrance, 34, goes to his childhood home in La Porte, near South Bend, to watch the race with friends. Has every year since 2007.

"It's the most absurd thing ever," LaFrance told me. "I go to La Porte and gripe about the blackout."

Mark Rhodes of Fishers goes to the Speedway. Sits in the upper deck in Turn 3, higher than everyone but the spotters. Has every year since 2000. He and his wife, Beth, bring a scanner, a splitter and two headsets. In one ear they hear the radio broadcast, in the other a team's chatter. The scanner was an anniversary present from Beth to Mark.

"She's a bigger geek about this than I am," Rhodes, 51, says.

They're such race geeks that, after traveling from California to watch their first Indy 500 in 2000, they moved here in 2001 because they wanted to live in the same town as the Indy 500. They left jobs there. Didn't have jobs here. Came anyway. Loved the race that much.

These are the people the Indy 500 asked for a $100 million loan.

Rhodes is OK with the blackout, don't get me wrong. He's not painting himself as a victim, and anyway, he goes to the race every year. Spends $400 on tickets. Loves it.

"We get there early and watch the place come alive," he says. "Fans start feeding in. It's just an electric buzz."

But if the year comes when Rhodes can't attend in person, he says he'd watch the race on live TV if he could. With the TV on mute, and the radio broadcast filling his den.

The Indy 500 on radio is a tradition around here, in part because it's a magical event to hear, to fill the visual blanks with the contours of our imagination — and in part because it's blacked out on TV, and live radio is all we've got. Jared McMurry grew up listening to the Indy 500 on a boat on Raccoon Lake near Rockville. He's 20 now, a student at Gardner-Webb in North Carolina, but McMurry is back in town this weekend, home in Darlington, where he'll find a radio to listen to the race.

Here's how Boles, the IMS president, consumed the race as a kid in Danville. His family drove two hours to Jeffersonville and rented a room at the Holiday Inn so they could watch the race live. Look, Boles gets it. And he says IMS re-evaluates the blackout every year.

"The biggest thing fans need to know is, we look at (the blackout) every year," he said. "You can make a strong argument on either side of the fence."

Meanwhile, some historical irony. The second TV show in Indianapolis history was the 1949 Indy 500. The first? WFBM (Channel 6) went on the air for the first time with a documentary about the race called "The Crucible of Speed." An hour later, the race aired live.

That 1949 race is the only one this city has ever seen, flag to flag, on live TV.

In 1950, according to Indy 500 historian Donald Davidson, WFBM aired network programming – with live updates from the track. Starting in 1951, the live Indy 500 was gone from local TV.

Sixty-four years later, the race remains blacked out locally. J.P. LaFrance will wake Sunday at 6 a.m. and drive 2½ hours north to La Porte to get a signal. Young guy, the kind of audience the stagnant IndyCar Series needs for its long-term success, and he's going away to watch it.

How long before he just goes away?

How long before IMS shows us the same race at the same time that they'll see it in Singapore? Call it love, call it an apology, call it what it is: a goodwill return, and just pennies on the dollar at that, on our $100 million investment.

Find Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel