A lot of empty seats.......

[cantdrive55]

You're never gonna find 100,000+ fans pay to wach a feeder series. Nationwide Series at the Brickyard fell flat on it's face, and that was with Danicamania, the savior of all things auto racing. IRP was the perfect venue, why they had to lose the Truck race as well is beyond me. The Cup race attendance was pretty embarrassing as well.

Just wait until the gymnastics

you do know that gymnastics are mostly early teenage girls, unless you're talking about men's gymnastics, but i'm not sure that's any better.

 

[Jon Asher]

No offense, Mike English, but what “motorsports industry experts” are you talking about in your post?

It’s time for a little story about organization-provided attendance figures.

For the first Chicago race NHRA announced a crowd of 135,000 for the three-day event. While that was clearly inflated (the crowd on Friday was okay, and better on Saturday, but no sellout), what happened the following year actually played a role in NHRA no longer issuing attendance figures.

Yes, part of the reason was racing at facilities owned by SMI, which is a publicly held company. If inflated attendance figures are announced stockholders are liable to ask where their share went when the dividends don’t reflect those inflated numbers.

Anyway, the following year I verbally witnessed then NHRA Media Director Denny Darnell and then NHRA president Dallas Gardner debating, in the press room, what number to put out.

Please remember that the second year of the race in Chicago was far less successful than the first. Anyone who attended both races would attest to that.

The announced attendance was 136,500!

The Texas Motorplex once announced a crowd of 140,000 for their fall race, this during the time when Billy Meyer was unsuccessfully trying to convince the city of Grand Prairie to use taxpayer’s dollars to build the track.

The Dallas Morning News exposed the phony numbers.

Jon Asher
Senior Editor
CompetitionPlus.com

 

[Mike]

Jon, no offense taken and I sure dont agree with them. I dont remember where I copied it from but you can figure it was a pretty slanted site.



(The Texas Motorplex once announced a crowd of 140,000 for their fall race, this during the time when Billy Meyer was unsuccessfully trying to convince the city of Grand Prairie to use taxpayer’s dollars to build the track).


Remember that one very well.

 

[shoedoos]

Ogilvy & Mather to drive NASCAR brand revamp

 

[DrRocket]

Ogilvy & Mather to drive NASCAR brand revamp

Looks like the actual racing has pretty much taken a backseat to "growing the brand."

 

[Jim]

Mark, Jim Vail who posts here once in awhile has gone to the Night Bristol race for like 7-8 years! He said his seats are about $25-30 cheaper now than they used to be, I believe it's the economy more than anything! But at least NASCAR trims ticket prices during a recession, NHRA doesn't unless a sponsor ponies up!

When I first got my Bristol tickets for the 2002 season to attend the Aug night race you had to buy a seson ticket package that included both Cup and Busch series for both the spring and Aug races. That first year my cost was $1100 for 3 seats and full payment was due right then. When I renewed for this year those same seats were $900 and I could go on a non interest payment plan ranging from something like 4 to 9 months, they would charge your CC each month. they added the payment plan a few years ago. A few years back, I believe it was after they dropped the price, they announced to ticket holders that they would freeze price increases as long as you renewed by a certian date. About 2 years ago for the first time in something like 20 years you could actually buy tickets just for the night race. This year I added 3 more tickets to the night race as I plan on dropping the season tickets for next year. I used to always be able to get rid of the spring race tickets. Last year I had to eat em, and this year I took a loss. Can't afford to be doing that all the time.