Want to attend IndyCar's $1 Million Challenge at The Thermal Club? It'll cost you thousands
For more than the price of admission to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s Hulman Terrace Club all May long, high-rolling IndyCar fans can attend the series’ $1 Million Challenge – the made-for-TV All-Star event preceded by two days of testing, practice and qualifying – at The Thermal Club just outside Palm Springs on March 22-24.
The price of admission per ticket for a crowd of just a couple thousand inside the gates of the private community? $2,000 (plus $80 in fees).
Information has been distributed to club members but easily-accessible and widely-distributed information regarding ticket sales, which are now public, is non-existent. When visiting IndyCar’s online ticket portal, a click on “ticket info” for the non-points-paying race takes fans to The Thermal Club’s website, which doesn’t have a mention of IndyCar’s future planned event – or its two-day series open test it hosted last February that put the venue on the map for the greater IndyCar fanbase.
The ticket portal, though, is live, and IndyStar made it all the way through the relatively quick ticket-buying process up to hitting the “Pay Now” button. So though it appears the opening of ticket sales has been rather quiet – perhaps to keep sales to frequent club guests or deep-pocketed sponsors (or prospective ones) – the sale does indeed appear to be open to the general public.
According to the ticketing portal, one $2,000 ticket gets an attendee lunch each of the three days (alcohol not included) as well as parking and access to the pits to put fans as close to the action as they can get. The site did not include information as to whether seating would be reserved, first-come, first-served or stationed inside any sort of mobile hospitality units. IndyCar ran a full-field two-day test at the venue earlier this year as a soft launch for the 2024 event that was closed to the general public. Club members, however, were allowed 20 guests who could rotate through the paddock area with one of the six passes each member family was given.
A brand-new event for 2024: IndyCar to hold $1 Million Challenge at The Thermal Club
Next March's three-day event will be capped on by a qualifying session that Saturday, a pair of heat races (10 laps each) and a 20-lap main event that will include the top-six finishers from both heats fighting for a $1 million grand-prize to share with their randomly-assigned Club member for the weekend -- volunteers who will have chipped in to help create the multi-million-dollar prize pool. The runner-up in the main event will split $700,000 with their Club member, with $500,000 for 3rd-place, $200,000 for 4th, $100,000 for 5th and $23,000 each for the 6th through 27th-place finishers.
How IndyCar's $1 Million Challenge ticket prices compare
The steep prices for access to the event weekend seem to reflect the exclusivity of the venue as a famed gated community filled with $5 million homes and a lavish facility that its owners, Tim Rogers and his wife, Twanna, have spent $275 million to bring to life. As of earlier this year, The Thermal Club had 210 members and currently included 75 homes and 135 lots sold – each large enough to accommodate a 30,000 square-foot home that purchasers have to promise to build within five years of buying. Monthly membership fees are well over $2,000, on top of a $175,000 initiation fee.
Compared to the event’s tickets, race fans could pay $1,750 for month-long access to IMS’s Hulman Terrace Club, where they could expect to pay an additional $125 or so per day for catered food and drink throughout the day. The four-figure fee gets one access to climate-controlled stadium seating, as well as pit and garage access the whole month, minus race days – though that can be gained for an additional $350.
Inside The Thermal Club: What a $5.2 million membership gets you
Without hospitality access, attending Indy 500 qualifying, Carb Day and race day in the best seat in the venue (E Penthouse) would run someone less than $350 all-in for four days at the Racing Capital of the World. Attending weekend-long IndyCar events outside of May generally run fans somewhere around $200 with solid hospitality upgrades achievable for $300-$500 more for the common fan (with exceptions).
Following the announcement of IndyCar’s $1 Million Challenge the day of the 2023 season-finale, Penske Entertainment officials did emphasize that fans would be permitted in the series’ second trip to The Thermal Club, but there was a clear emphasis that the purported All-Star event was being billed as a ‘made-for-TV event’ not meant to be seen or compared to just another race on the calendar.
Tickets for the latest edition of golf’s comparable one-day event – ‘The Match’, which this summer featured Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce facing off against Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson in a 12-hole golf match – ran $250 for a limited allotment at Wynn Golf Club in Las Vegas. The event aired exclusively on TNT. NBC will broadcast IndyCar's All-Star event.
Perhaps an even better comparison, ‘Legend’-level access to NASCAR’s Clash at the LA Coliseum next February – the Cup series’ preseason exhibition that features practice and qualifying on Saturday and last year included a Sunday of four qualifying heats, two last-chance races, a concert and the two-hour main event – will run race fans $1,199. The package includes seating in the venue’s 1923 Club hospitality space, VIP red carpet access, a track walk and a guided garage tour.
Tickets to Formula 1’s newest, hottest show – its debut weekend racing along ‘The Strip’ in Las Vegas next month – has long been considered to be racing’s most excessively high-priced ticket, but less than one month from race day, various weekend-long ticket packages (all including the price of catered food and non-alcoholic drinks for the weekend) can be bought on F1’s ticketing site.
Seats near the city’s new Sphere attraction run $2,180, while start-finish-line seating, an additional day of grounds access (and food and beverages) and weekend entertainment in the Heineken Silver Main Grandstand will run you $2,725. Seating for the weekend in Red Bull’s own fan-specific grandstand in Turn 3, along with team merch, ranges from $2,507-$2,725.
Hospitality-level access at Club Paris ($5,995), the HGV Clubhouse ($6,540) and Club SI ($7,630) all still fall in the four-figure range and all come with all-inclusive premium food and beverage.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: IndyCar: Tickets for $1 Million Challenge at Thermal Club cost $2,000
