Something that you may not have considered, sending the cars to a smaller track or to a divisional event sounds great. But it doesn't cost less to run the car at Small Town Dragway than it does at Charlotte. That's why you see so few match races these days. Those small tracks would love to have 8 Funny Cars come in for a Saturday Night Shootout, but where it used to be $5,000 to book a car for the night, it now costs more than that to make one run. Book in 8 cars at 5K each, $40,000.00. Sell 5000 tickets at $20 that's $100,000.00 and the numbers work. When each car needs 20K to cover costs, you can't do it.
Alan
That's true, and of course I get carried away as a drag racing tragic. There are many other costs to factor in. But it is fun to play hypotheticals.
Let's hypothetically say we are doing the NHRA Mello Yello Funny Car Showdown presented by Nitromater, where teams race for Mello Yello points. That's a $250,000 payout. It will be a two night show at a track where you can stack about 7,500 people in, so a mid-size track. I was thinking somewhere like Maryland (though I realize it is under IHRA sanction, and it has a capacity of around 10,000).
Two nights of racing and let's say we do manage to get 15,000 attendance. An NHRA show would carry a premium ticket price, perhaps in the range of $40 for Top Fuel OR Funny Car. So we are now doing about $600,000 at the gate before we factor in premium seating, hospitality and so on.
Maybe there is a neat sportsman show (because a lot of sportsman racers want to spectate for the big show as well) and we get some back gate income too. Maybe the Nitro Mall is a trailer instead of a big marquee, but it will do great business because this is a new track, as will the racers' merchandise trailers. Maybe the event is in a new region, so you have a fresh shot at sponsorship. But then of course we have to advertise extensively, get the Safety Safari there, tech and so on, and we have a risk cost associated with weather etc. Perhaps we put it on TV, but we go with a three-camera set up and do a magazine-style show that is screened later rather than live to save on production costs while still getting as many eyeballs as possible.
All just hypothetical, brain experiment stuff, because it is fun to do and nobody has to listen haha.
I suppose the end question is, what is NHRA's expected profit on an average national event? I can see their overall revenue for sponsorship and admission in the tax return but naturally it is hard to break down what costs would be associated with actually running the events. But if we can get to a position where NHRA earns similar revenue, while racers have less events (as some seem to be asking for), could that be a good thing?
I think one of the reasons for NHRA's success is that it stays very stable (a very underrated strategy and people are quick to point out bad crowds but often don't recognise NHRA is still the only game in town that can pull the crowds it does 24 times a year), but that isn't to say we couldn't extend that model into new markets with some changes in how we perceive the 'big show'.
