MILLER: A race for heroes deserves a bigger prize

The hotels in and around Indianapolis, demanding four-night minimums and outrageous prices, were sold out early so late planners had to stay as far away as Terre Haute or Bloomington, 75 and 50 miles away respectively.

Restaurants were packed for three consecutive weekends.

Scalpers that avoided the Indy 500 for much of the past two decades reaped nice profits as ticket demand was like the good old days.

The Levy Brothers hit up the paying customers for $10 tenderloins and $6 for a bottle of water and pulled in $66 per case of beer from suite holders.

And, by selling all its seats plus adding suites in addition to the $5 million PennGrade sponsorship, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway reaped the rewards of what had to be its biggest haul ever.

So, all in all to quote a famous Texas racer, it was a pretty profitable month of May for everyone – except two groups: The guys risking their lives to put on the show, and the guys paying for it. The purse of $13,273,253 sounds like big money but, in reality, it's chump change. Think not? Let's do a little math.

There are roughly 230,000 permanent seats at IMS and they've never cost more than they did this year. Priced from $50 to $230, they averaged around $125 so that's a little over $28 million.

IMS officials estimated 75,000 would be in the infield on Race Day at $40 a pop and that's a cool $3 million. Add on another $30 for the Snake Pit (which IMS claims had 30,000 people) for an extra $900,000.

There were 1,000 Hulman Terrace Club seats available for $1,750 a pop so add on another $1.75 million.

Then let's go to Carb Day (left), which cost $30 a person and was larger than any in recent memory with estimates of a crowd from 50,000 to 100,000. So let's go with 75,000 x $30 and throw another $2.25 million in the kitty.

Qualifying weekend probably didn't draw 15,000 total but that's another $300,000.

How about suite revenue? Not the annual fees, which are either $58,000 or $110,000, but the single days in May that IMS peddles for anywhere from $2,100 to $10,000 (depending on whether it's a group of 40 or 80). And five days were sold out last month for both group sizes. Plus they added suites in Turns 1-2 to meet the demand. That's another decent chunk of change so let's estimate $500,000.

If they sold 75,000 souvenir programs at $25 that's $1.875 million more.

The teams, manufacturers and sponsors rent motorhome spots for $5,000.

And parking has become a nice little moneymaker. IMS-controlled parking on Race Day, inside and out, was a sellout. You could pay $50 or $75 or $125 in Turns 3 & 4 or $60, $100 or $200 in the LAZ lot. It was $20 to park on all other days at the track. It’s anybody’s guess as to how many cars can be parked in and around the seven IMS lots but let’s say 10,000 (another lowball guess) at an average of $75 for an additional $750,000.

I'm not positive how the concessions and suites are divided up, but one imagines that Levy pays IMS so much for the rights and then splits all the profits from food and beverage sales. But 300,000 hot, thirsty spectators had to drop a lot of coin last Sunday. For the sake of argument, let’s say half of them spent $20 apiece for soda, water, beer or a hot dog. That’s $3 million.

And let's not forget the suites, where a $7 case of Coke is sold for $44 and a minimum of 30 people are charged for at $30 a person, regardless how many show up on a given day. A catering bill for one resident of a Turn 2 suite was $8,000 for both races in May.

So with just these conservative estimates, the Speedway had to gross between $45 and $50 million before expenses.

So let's take a look at the purse ...

• Rossi earns $2.54 million for winning 100th Running

First off, it’s insulting when the driver is presented a check at the victory banquet because it doesn’t go to him, it’s not the amount shown most of the time anyway, and it’s woefully short of what it should be worth.

The Leader’s Circle payout of $100,000 was removed from the bottom line for 21 of the 33 drivers and goes directly to the owners. The drivers and mechanics don’t share in it. In other words, the $390,000 that Will Power supposedly accepted for 10th place at the Victory Banquet was actually $290,000. But Power gets a nice retainer from Roger Penske, so he’s one of the lucky ones not dependent on a percentage of his earnings.

Meanwhile, J.R. Hildebrand only competes during May and he drove his butt off to finish sixth, but made considerably less ($257,305) than the five guys behind him because Ed Carpenter Racing has just one LC share. Oh, by the way, Jason Duffner made $216,000 for finishing sixth in the Colonial PGA tourney while Hildebrand was trying to defy death for three hours at 220mph.

Sage Karam, who charged from from 23rd to sixth for Dennis Reinbold before crashing (left), was at the bottom of the payout at $203,305 for 32nd place. Their tire bill for the month was $85,000.

Carlos Munoz picked up a second-place check for $788,000. Subtract the $100,000 for the LC and it was almost the same amount Arie Luyendyk made for finishing second in 1993.

One of Sunday’s mid-pack finishers figured out what he made after taxes and it was $12,000 – or roughly what it pays to win a 30-lap World of Outlaw sprint feature.

A winner during this past decade confessed that after the LC, team owner, sponsors and taxes were removed, that his Indy victory netted less than $350,000.

The expense of IndyCar racing continues to climb, but the purses lag way behind. The winning team of any IndyCar race today gets $40,000 or $50,000 – or about $50,000 less than Buddy Lazier earned for winning Pikes Peak in 2001. And its all part of the annual LC contract so the driver’s take is a joke.

Of course Indianapolis should be the exception to the norm because it still generates huge profits. Sure, it loses money on most practice days, it helped a few teams make ends meet to secure 33 cars and it’s got to pay back that $100 million loan over time ($5 million a year?). IMS also spent several million in promoting the 100th running, plus another $6-7 million on construction, repair and maintenance of the grounds and facilities.

The late Dave Cassidy, who was Tony Hulman’s right-hand man for the better part of 25 years and also ran IMS concessions and merchandising, once said that the Speedway eats money at an alarming rate. But IMS – which reaps a reported $15 million in TV money just for the Brickyard 400 – needs to get realistic about May and the Indy 500 purse. Making drivers spend two days taking chances for the paltry payout in “qualifying” needs a major cash infusion, as does the pit stop competition.

The Daytona 500, which draws a third of the crowd Indy does, paid $18 million in 2015, so Indianapolis should have spread out at least $25 million for its three weekends.

It was a great month, a good race, lots of good promotions and a fantastic crowd. It was also the cash cow for the ages. Now there is no denying the Indianapolis 500 remains one of the premier events in all of sports in terms of attendance, longevity, prestige – and profit.

So it’s time to start paying the full-time competitors their fair share and IMS could actually reap the benefits of a purse that was appetizing to others. Think some of those cool IMSA teams that race for chicken feed wouldn’t have a one-off go at Indy if it paid $500,000 to start? Or entice Tony Stewart or Richard Childress if it was $5 million to win? Instead of scrambling like to mad to find 33 cars there might actually be real bumping to make the show.

But the immediate issue is how grossly underpaid the performers are for all the entertainment they provide during the month.

The drivers, who are charged the ludicrous fee of $4,500 for a motorhome spot unless they do PR trade-outs for IMS, have put on some of the most dramatic and thrilling races during the past few Mays.

And they deserve a much, much larger slice of the pie – not the crumbs they’re thrown.