Indy 500 purse, payout breakdown: How much prize money does the winner get in 2021?

The Indy 500 will be perhaps one of the biggest signs that sports are returning to normal in 2021. 

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway will welcome 135,000 fans to the race, still well below the 400,000-plus people who have often been eyewitness to the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing,” but it will be the largest gathering since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

But with attendance back up, will the purse be back up to its normal totals after it was cut down for 2020? 

The 2020 purse was poised to be the largest in history, said Roger Penske, who bought the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2019. After the decision was made to halt fan attendance for the 2020 race, the purse was cut in half from around $15 million to $7.5 million because there would be no ticket sales. 

Fans will be back in the stands this year, even if it won’t be back up to full capacity. The Indianapolis Motor Speedway will only allow 40 percent capacity in an effort to keep fans socially distanced. 

MORE: Here are the 5 closest Indianapolis 500 finishes in race history

How much does the Indy 500 winner get?

Prize money: $2 million (est.)

This is an estimate based on past Indy 500 payout breakdowns and the 2019 and 2020 purses.

To this point, there has not been a purse announced for the 2021 race, so there is no telling what the prize for the top spot will look like. Given that fans will be back in the stands, it will certainly be more than the $1,370,500 prize earned by Takuma Sato for winning last year’s race, but it might not quite reach the $2,669,529 top prize for Simon Pagenaud, who won the Indy 500 in 2019. 

According to a report from the Indianapolis Star, the prize for the winner has steadily decreased in terms of percentage of the total purse won to where the first-place finisher receives between 15 and 20 percent of the pot. 

Still, the winner can expect a healthy payday. Second-place finisher Scott Dixon received only $505,000 last year, less than half of what Sato received. The top spot again in 2021 should receive quite a bit more than the rest of the field. 

What is the Indy 500 purse for 2021?

Indy 500 purse: $10 million (est.)

The purse for the 2021 Indy 500 hasn’t been released publicly yet, but it likely figures to be somewhere between the $7.5 million pot in 2020 and the $13 million purse in 2019. 

With attendance at 40 percent, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway will likely be able to increase the pot. The largest venue for sports in the world has become accustomed to filling up beyond the seating capacity of 257,325, however, as that is just the number of permanent seats available. So the 40 percent figure likely isn’t totally accurate. 

Penske had shown interest in making the 2020 pot the largest in the history of the race before the pandemic forced it to be reduced. With people once again paying to be in seats, he should have the chance to increase the purse back up past the $7.5 million pot last year. 

Indy 500 payout breakdown 2021

The payout for winners of the Indy 500 takes into account several factors beyond simply the placement of the drivers, but each one will be coming home with at least six figures, if recent history is any indication. 

The payout structure takes into account sponsors on certain drivers as well as race-day variables such as laps led and fastest laps. Last year, for example, Marco Andretti, who finished 13th, earned more than all but the top four finishers in the race. 

Below are the results from last year’s Indy 500, which saw its original purse size cut in half because of the coronavirus pandemic. 

Indy 500 payout history

Last year’s purse was the lowest since 1992, when it was $7,527,450 and Al Unser Jr. took home a prize of $1,244,184. The winners in each race also used to take home a larger share of the prize, though now that percentage tends to sit around 20 percent. 

Here are all the previous purses and earnings in the past 104 years of the Indy 500.