Phil Richards

Indianapolis

Saturday at the Speedway

Sprint Cup practice%3A 9 a.m.%3B Sprint Cup qualifying%2C 2%3A10 p.m.

Nationwide qualifying%2C 12%3A10 p.m.%3B Nationwide race%2C 4%3A30 p.m.

Sunday, when the Brickyard 400 will be contested for the 21st time at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, is a big day for Doug Boles, but in at least one sense it will be like any other.

"I get up every day, even in May, trying to figure out how to sell tickets for the Brickyard," the IMS president said.

It's a big job. It's a big track. If the same crowd shows up as last year, 100,000 seats will be occupied (Boles' count), and 150,000 will be empty. We're a long way from the 1990s, when the Brickyard was NASCAR's hottest ticket and biggest buzz, the stands were full and the race rivaled motorsport's most iconic event, its roommate, the Indianapolis 500.

It has been a long, hard road for NASCAR as well.

NASCAR estimates that attendance for its premier series, the Sprint Cup, was 4.67 million in 2005, an average of 129,722 a race. In 2012, the last season for which NASCAR provided attendance estimates, the total was 3.52 million, the average 97,722.

NASCAR's estimate for the 2012 Brickyard was 125,000. IMS might be, as NASCAR historian Dan Pierce said, "absolutely the worst possible configuration for a stock car race," but that crowd ranked No. 8 among Sprint Cup's 36 points races that year and the Brickyard remains one of the series' better-attended events.

Still, selling tickets is Job 1.

"I think the great thing NASCAR has in partnership with IMS is they're talking to fans, we're talking to fans, we're trying to find the right mix of activities, both on-track and off-track that meets the fans' needs," said NASCAR vice president of industry services, Jill Gregory, who works closely with tracks and brought her team to IMS for extensive consultation last month.

"Our partnership with the folks at IMS is as strong as it has been for many years."

Sign of the times

If you're interested in putting IMS' attendance issue in perspective, look at Sprint Cup series-wide.

Of the 23 tracks on which its 36 points races are contested, 14 have reduced permanent seating capacity in recent years, many significantly. Most telling is Daytona International Speedway, home of the "Great American Race," Sprint Cup's Super Bowl, the Daytona 500.

In the course of "Daytona Rising," a three-year, $400 million renovation to be completed in 2016, Daytona's seating capacity will be slashed from a high of 159,000 to 101,000.

When the inaugural Brickyard 400 was run in 1994, there were only two other Sprint Cup races within 500 miles of Indianapolis, both at Michigan International Speedway. The expansion that brought NASCAR to Indianapolis and beyond and made the series a national rage has pushed that number to seven, the two at Michigan, one at Kentucky Speedway (opened in 2000) and two each at Chicagoland (2001) and Kansas (2001) speedways.

IMS won't reduce seating significantly; demand is there for the Indy 500. But Michigan's capacity has plummeted from a high of 137,000 to 72,000. Chicagoland and Kansas, new as they are, have gone from 73,000 to 55,500 and from 80,000 to 74,000, respectively. The cuts have been startlingly deep elsewhere, Atlanta, Richmond and Talladega among them.

The implication is obvious: Neither NASCAR nor the tracks expect the crowds that filled IMS and other race venues during the boom years from the late 1990s through the early 2000s to return, at least any time soon.

Passion play

Pierce, a University of North Carolina-Asheville history professor and author of a definitive history of NASCAR, "Real NASCAR: White Lightning, Red Clay and Big Bill France," recalls attending a 1994 race at Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway, a ½-mile track.

The field was bunched, the action was slam-bang, the cars roared past every 16 or 17 seconds and every time NASCAR's lead hero/villain Dale Earnhardt swept by, Pierce recalled, "the guy in front of me stood up and shot him the bird."

If you ask Pierce the difference between NASCAR then and now, he's quick with an answer.

"I don't sense that people are as passionate about the sport as they used to be," he said.

The move from traditional short tracks of ½ to ¾ miles like Bristol, Martinsville, Va., and Richmond, Va., to the current lot, ranging from 1 ½-2 ½ miles, where the cars are spread out, reducing the bumping and banging that made NASCAR gut-level exhilarating, eventually dimmed enthusiasm.

The retirement of drivers like Earnhardt, Richard Petty, David Pearson, Darrell Waltrip, Bobby Allison, Dale Jarrett, Rusty Wallace and Bill Elliott and the rivalries that distinguished them has robbed NASCAR of personality, dulled its edge.

Pierce believes the explosive growth that made NASCAR a sports phenomenon in the late 1990s and early 2000s was unsustainable. The sport became a fad. It was cool to be a Sprint Cup fan, if only for a time.

"People sneered at 'those rednecks,' then all of a sudden it was really the hip thing to do," Pierce said. "Still, if you compare where NASCAR is now to the early '90s, it looks pretty good."

Value added

IMS is not standing still, nor is NASCAR.

IMS added Nationwide and the sports car series races to the Brickyard weekend two years ago. It has introduced a range of activities this year, including concerts featuring seven country music attractions and improved fan access to drivers and the garage area. It is offering a ticket package designed to make the race more affordable for families and to cultivate young fans.

It has spent more money on advertising than ever.

About 17,000 seats in South and North Vista sections that would have gone unsold are covered this weekend with banners from sponsors Lilly and Crown Royal, giving them added exposure and making the telecast more comely.

NASCAR has assembled a Fan Council and established a Fan & Media Engagement Center to better identify its constituency's priorities. It has tweaked its qualifying procedures and its format for the Chase for the Sprint Cup, the season-ending 10-race series that decides its season champion, to make them more exciting.

"We're trying to follow up with our fans who don't renew to get a sense of why they're not renewing," Boles said. "We try to study everything.

"Where we feel we're making traction is with the casual NASCAR fan who's looking for more than just a race and that's one reason for the music this year."

The challenges remain: Often blistering late-July heat, the economic crash of 2008 from which many middle class families have not fully recovered, gas which has approached $4 per gallon and its impact on travel, the seven Sprint Cup races within 500 miles and a television product so good races must compete with it to put fans in the stands.

There's also the historic track, such an exquisite fit for the nimble, aerodynamic, 1,600-pound Indy cars, so ill-suited with its tight, comparatively flat corners to Sprint Cup's blocky and more ponderous, 3,400-pound stock cars.

The 2013 Brickyard featured 20 lead changes, only one of which occurred during green-flag racing and did not involve a pit stop. The 2013 Indianapolis 500, by contrast, yielded a record 68 lead changes and tight, exciting racing.

The Brickyard is, and can be, many things. The "500" is not among them.

"We've got to realize that the 500 is still the premier event," said Roger Penske, whose team has won Indy 15 times, and a Sprint Cup owner who will field three drivers in the Brickyard. "This time of the year there's a lot of things going on, but (the Brickyard) still has a big crowd. Hopefully with the way the series is going — the TV ratings are still strong — we can see a better crowd."

Show goes on

The Indianapolis 500 is blacked out in the Indianapolis market and not available on local television until several hours after the conclusion of the race.

A similar stratagem is not in play for the Brickyard, Boles said.

Nor is a move to the road course that won such favorable reviews during its May debut, the Grand Prix of Indianapolis, nor the installation of lights for night racing.

Boles acknowledged there is "a good argument to be made" for lights but said the speedway estimates it would cost $20 million to light the track and another $5 million to illuminate the rest of the facility and whether the advantage would offset the enormous expense is unknowable.

Whatever the track's and the fans' issues, the drivers love the Brickyard, its rich tradition and deep history. They all want their names on that trophy.

Two-time winner Tony Stewart called IMS "sacred ground" and said, "If you can't win Daytona, one race a year, I want to win the Brickyard."

The race's champions' roll is star-spangled: Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson, four times each; Stewart and Jarrett, two apiece; Earnhardt and Elliott.

The Brickyard, like all Sprint Cup races, has a one-year renewable contract, but it's going nowhere but forward.

NASCAR's current eight-year $4.5 billion television contract ends in 2015. The new deal, with Fox and NBC, will pay $8.2 billion over 10 years. That's $820 million a year, 65 percent of which is distributed to the tracks.

A crowd of 100,000 might fill only a fraction of IMS, but with an average ticket priced at $85, that's $8.5 million in revenue exclusive of concessions and merchandise and sponsors' fees.

The Brickyard 400 is profitable and secure, and however many show up to watch it Sunday, Doug Boles will awaken Monday with this in mind: There are tickets to be sold, plenty of them.

Email Star reporter Phil Richards at phil.richards@indystar.com and follow him on Twitter at @philrichards6.

TODAY: 9 a.m.: Sprint Cup practice; 12:10 p.m.: Nationwide qualifying; 2:10 p.m.: NASCAR Sprint Cup qualifying; 4:30 p.m.: Lilly Diabetes 250 Nationwide race.

SUNDAY: 1:22 p.m.: Brickyard 400.

TICKETS: General admission: Today: $25; Sunday: $30. Reserved seats: Today: $51-$67; Sunday: $41-$159.