Thread: Milwaukee Mile

Originally Posted by FIAT1

Milwaukee IndyFest update | Welcome to Milwaukee IndyFest

http://youtu.be/mywVQBePSuY

Interesting that the Mile has an ARCA race tonight with 80 cars entered. Drivers include Kenseth, his kid, Rusty Wallace, Sauter and others...hmmm...no wonder the local news didn't even mention Andretti's Indyfest, but he hasn't run any TV ads either. A major pr fumble. It's almost as if he doesn't want the race to succeed...What a bag of hot air when he championed that he was going to save Milwaukee. Methinks this race is under promoted, under sponsored, and under everything. When an ARCA race gets more publicity at the same track as an Indycar race, something is definitely wrong with the promoter's pr staff. Shame on them.

Booger, they rarely understand the local market. When they took over Toronto in the wake of the collapse of Champ Car, they dreadfully underestimated the promotional work needed to fill the stands, they made decisions that were not race fan friendly that the previous promotion hadn't, and they alienated many of the long time volunteers who are avid race fans who would work one or two of the three days and then buy tickets in the stands with their families, or were now bad mouthing them all over when they got screwed over by the new regime. That said, the Andretti's have more or less gotten the even back to some resemblence of its former self...but they had to go back and eat a little humble pie. I guess in Milwaukee, they are replaying some of the same mistakes...

Actually it was an ASA race. Sorry for the misinformation on ARCA (same kind of series though) in my earlier post. And after reading this morning's newspaper report, they had a much larger crowd than they expected. They filled the center grandstand to overflow, ran out of food in the concession stands and put on a hell of a show according to the report and comments from fans that attended. That means they had over 10,000 fans in the infield and grandstand. Over 80 cars were entered. Did Andretti Sports Marketing even know that this event was planned just 5 days before their Indyfest event? And if they did, why not combine the 2 events so that stock car fans could see Indy cars and Indy car fans could see a stock car event. THAT would have been a sellout. Unfortunately, now I'm afraid that Indyfest may be doomed. Who, other than diehard fans, would pay to go to 2 separate events within 5 days at the same venue? There just isn't that much entertainment money laying around for Milwaukee families. Another Andretti mistake, I'm afraid. Just leave the mile to the stock car boys and head to Road America...Oops! There's a NASCAR race at RA next week. My, oh my.

INDYCAR: Make Or Break Weekend For Milwaukee

...at this point I could go through list of complaints ,but the best I can do is show up for the race and go from there

Anyone go to the indyfest block party tonight? Wife and I came from the twin cities and our hotel is a block from the party. Met Michael Andretti and listening to a cover band. Lots of older indycars on display. Fair crowd turnout, but dwindling. Looks like andretti is doing local news interviews.

May not be perfect, but this is orders of magnitude over last year.

Ticket booth guy at indyfest said about 30k tickets have been sold.