As many of you may already know, my host company is Penske Corporation and my primary placement is the Chevrolet Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix. For those of you who do not know, the Chevrolet Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix is a 501(c)3 organization and a subsidiary of the Downtown Detroit Partnership. This year the Grand Prix was held May 29-31, 2015 (last weekend). The Grand Prix is held on beautiful Belle Isle Park. The event included the Chevrolet Dual in Detroit presented by Quicken Loans featuring cars of the Verizon IndyCar Series, the Chevrolet Sports Car Classic presented by the Metro Detroit Chevy Dealers with the sports cars of the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship, the high-performance vehicles of the Pirelli World Challenge Series in the Cadillac V-Series Challenge presented by the Metro Detroit Cadillac Dealers and the high-flying trucks of the SPEED Energy Formula Off-Road presented by TRAXXAS. Partners for the 2015 Grand Prix included, but were not limited to, General Motors, Quicken Loans, MotorCity Casino Hotel and Verizon Wireless.
As many of you witnessed, last weekend was a weather disaster. It rained every day of the Grand Prix. I was devastated because all of the work in marketing and promotion prior to the race had gone in vain, or so I thought. Despite having the worst weather in Grand Prix history, we still produced solid numbers in television ratings, viewership, through social media and even grandstand attendance.
On television, the national numbers from both IndyCar races were very strong with each race drawing a rating that was higher than any IndyCar event this season other than the Indianapolis 500. Locally, the Grand Prix established new television rating records. We rated a 2.8 on WXYZ-TV in Detroit during Saturday’s race which represented a 33% increase from 2014. Sunday’s Dual in Detroit race posted a remarkable 4.2 household rating, which represented an over 60% boost in ratings from last year’s Sunday race numbers on WXYZ.
On Social Media, the Grand Prix social channels of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube was measured at 12.4 million people, which represented an increase of 86% from 2014. The Grand Prix recorded 139.5 million total social media impressions in 2015, which was an increase of 34% from last year’s numbers.
Our corporate partnership in 2015 reached an all-time high with more than 70 sponsors supporting the Grand Prix, compared to 56 partner companies in 2014. We anticipate corporate partnership renewals for 2016 as early as July.
Although our physical attendance was down from approximately 100,000+ Grand Prix attendees in 2014, we had an estimated the total attendance for 2015 at approximately 65,000. This was very surprising but it shows the strength of our connection with the community.
Other non-tangible benefits we have seen are ways we can improve accessibility and parking on Belle Isle to prevent damage to the landscape, ways to increase the fan experience even in the rain, affirmation that the changes that we made to Belle Isle in 2014 actually worked and were needed, and much more.
Despite the rain, I learned so much from my time working for the Chevrolet Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix. We are a family, from our sponsor all the way to our volunteers. We worked hard and the Grand Prix still made a powerful presence. Many could have given up when the forecast made changes for the worse, but we all stuck it out with a smile, which helped us to set records even in the worse circumstances. We also exposed countless people to an event that they had no knowledge of prior. Now it is time to look forward to 2016. We will use what we have learned in 2015 to bring Detroit the best Grand Prix ever!
Resources: http://www.detroitgp.com/news/index.cfm?cid=62899