INDIANAPOLIS (WRTV) — Reserved seating for the Indianapolis 500 on May 24 will be sold out for the second consecutive year, and the local television broadcast delay will be lifted again.
The final reserved seating tickets were expected to be sold on Wednesday, said a news release from Amanda Stanley, communications director at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. This year's sellout happened a week earlier than last year's.
The grandstands also sold out in 2016, the 100th edition of the race.
The track is estimated to have about 350,000 reserved seats. Resale reserved-seating tickets remained available on Wednesday.
The race also sold out in 2021, when the race was limited to 135,000 fans due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The race was first locally broadcast in 1949 and 1950 on WFBM-TV, the progenitor of WRTV, as a way to induce sales of TV sets. The speedway, however, worried that gate receipts would drop and ended the local live-TV coverage. But, the race continued to be broadcast live on the radio and, from 1964 to 1970, on closed-circuit TV watched in theaters around the nation.
Nationwide live-TV broadcasts of the race began in 1986, but they were blacked out locally, usually to be aired hours later.
The 500 didn't air on TV again in Indianapolis until the sellout of 2016 to celebrate the 100th edition of the race, and in 2020 and 2021 due to capacity restrictions due to the coronavirus. It also aired live in 2025 due to the sellout.
