IndyCar gets 288,000 requests for 100,000 available Freedom 250 tickets

Penske Entertainment received 288,000 ticket requests for the inaugural Freedom 250 Grand Prix of Washington D.C. IndyCar Series race that will run across the weekend of August 22-23 in the nation’s capital.

After fielding submissions for the free event over a nine-day span to gauge interest in the unique celebratory race commissioned by President Donald J. Trump to honor the country’s 250 birthday, Penske’s Bud Denker says the promotions team organizing the 1.66-mile, seven-turn street contest were overwhelmed by the response.

“The ticket request process ended last Sunday at midnight; it went for nine days, from Friday till Sunday, and there were 288,000 ticket requests,” Denker told RACER. “If we’d left it open five more days, we'd be up to Indy 500 numbers. Now we’re going back to my office to start putting the filtration process into place in terms of who gets the tickets, because we can't accommodate 280,000 people. Even if we divide that by 140,000 people a day, we just can't process that many people happily through magnetometers.”

Denker, who also runs the Detroit Grand Prix IndyCar event, says the Freedom 250 GP promotions team have created a ‘Stars & Stripes’ attendance plan where half of the free-ticket recipients will view the event from inside the track, and the other half will be stationed on the outside of the circuit.

“Not including the 4000 people in suites, and not including the teams and hardcards which is another 3500, [Penske Entertainment VP] Michael [Montri] and I are comfortable with putting 50,000 fans a day inside the racetrack, and then 50,000 fans outside the racetrack,” he said.

“We call it the Stars & Stripes. Outside is called Stars, inside is called Stripes. It's on our website that way, and we're comfortable with 50,000 a day, inside and outside. So, effectively 100,000 people.

“And I've got to have probably another 5000 off to the side, because of what we're going to be experiencing from White House staff, congressional staff, that's all going to need access in some way, somehow, possibly. So when it’s all said and done, you'll have over 120,000 people per day present for this event, both Saturday and Sunday.”

The event’s commissioning at the end of January has led to a constant sprint within Penske Entertainment and the IndyCar Series to put on the event in an unprecedentedly short period of time. To help accelerate the process, Monumental Sports & Entertainment and Harbinger Sports Partners were recruited to make the Freedom 250 happen on schedule.

“It's 75 days away from today, and I'm counting them every single day because these (street) races in Detroit, it’s a two-year planning process,” Denker said. “For Michael and I with Arlington, it was two years, and we’ve got six months basically to make this happen around the National Mall in downtown D.C. So Michael and my Detroit team were pulled in to help, and we’ve got Monumental as my sales agent. They've helped me sell the suites, and then on the other side of it, Harbinger puts on major events; they're doing the UFC fight at the White House, for instance, and do a lot of off-track events.

“I called them to help with permits, construction permits, all the things you'd have to do in the city of D.C. My permit book is approaching 1,000 pages, because every sidewalk has a different jurisdiction. This sidewalk is owned by the city. This one's owned by the National Park Service. This is owned by the National Art Gallery. This is owned by the Smithsonian. This is owned by the Federal Trade Commission. Or the National Archives. All of those require permitting, so Harbinger does all that. So our normal model of doing an event like this would never work in six months, so that’s what they’re helping with.

“They're used to shutting down roads for events every day of the week in D.C. They're used to ingress and egress issues. The mayor's team, Mayor Bowser, the city security people, they’ve all been so helpful. I'm assigned now two Secret Service agents, and they're great guys to work with. So, it’s really been green, green, green.”