What NHRA could learn from IHRA (4 Viewers)

[Mike]

1. Free youtube livestream. NHRA did this with Indy sportsmen and some divisionals do this. Not everyone is goimg to watch the show on Fox or FS1.

Many folks, especially younger or without disposable income, are not going to pay for NHRA tv, but they will watch for free. Some of those may become fans and come to a race when they can afford to.

2. Saturday night racing. It's been mentioned in other threads, but it floors me they,'ve not tried this.

3. Payouts for non-nitro divisions, and treating top alcohol as a pro class. The fastest classes after nitro should not be considered sportsmen.

Others may have additional things NHRA could adopt to help it's product. No matter how good or large an organization is, there's always room for improvement.

Btw, 13 tf and 9 fc at Columbus. Whether crowds will follow next year remains to be seen.

 

[Chili]

1. Free youtube livestream. NHRA did this with Indy sportsmen and some divisionals do this. Not everyone is goimg to watch the show on Fox or FS1.

Many folks, especially younger or without disposable income, are not going to pay for NHRA tv, but they will watch for free. Some of those may become fans and come to a race when they can afford to.

2. Saturday night racing. It's been mentioned in other threads, but it floors me they,'ve not tried this.

3. Payouts for non-nitro divisions, and treating top alcohol as a pro class. The fastest classes after nitro should not be considered sportsmen.

Others may have additional things NHRA could adopt to help it's product. No matter how good or large an organization is, there's always room for improvement.

Btw, 13 tf and 9 fc at Columbus. Whether crowds will follow next year remains to be seen.

NHRA has done the free stream several times on Friday’s this year. The one issue is if they are going to offer the free stream for all day, every race, there is no need for the NHRA.tv subscription. We don’t have the numbers they make vs. cost. Making it free would cut profits but if they get more exposure, then it might be worth it. IHRA was originally supposed to air on Speedsport 1 which I believe is bundled with Amazon prime. However I think they decided to stick with YouTube as well to get eyes on their product.

The PRO organization is one of the hurdles with night qualifying and races. The one downside with an evening race is weather. It could be beautiful all day with rain moving in during the evening. Hard to move a race to an earlier start time if scheduled for evening. Also the dew point comes into play. Now I’m all for some night races especially in the summer.

The payouts for the Alcohol classes need to increase but the money needs to come from somewhere. IHRA is paying more than NHRA but still not enough to make it feasible long term. They just call them a pro class because they can and want to. The alcohol cars need more exposure but they really aren’t getting it in IHRA either.

The poor crowds are really concerning for IHRA. It was slightly better this weekend than previously but how many in the stands are actually the sportsmen racers and families? They postponed the Friday sportsmen until today because of rain so I think a lot of people in the stands were racers stuck waiting to race today. The general population just doesn’t care for drag racing like we do. IHRA is drawing around 300 spectators for an event. It’s $40 a ticket and two dozen Nitro cars and they couldn’t get a crowd. Also most of the crowd even left before the second round of nitro last night. Now there are ways to do it better. I don’t know what the Midwest Drag Racing series did for their race in Michigan last night but they had a strong crowd. It could be free tickets but if they killed it on parking and concessions you can make a profit.

 

[Funnycarfanatic]

1. Free youtube livestream. NHRA did this with Indy sportsmen and some divisionals do this. Not everyone is goimg to watch the show on Fox or FS1.

Many folks, especially younger or without disposable income, are not going to pay for NHRA tv, but they will watch for free. Some of those may become fans and come to a race when they can afford to.

2. Saturday night racing. It's been mentioned in other threads, but it floors me they,'ve not tried this.

3. Payouts for non-nitro divisions, and treating top alcohol as a pro class. The fastest classes after nitro should not be considered sportsmen.

Others may have additional things NHRA could adopt to help it's product. No matter how good or large an organization is, there's always room for improvement.

Btw, 13 tf and 9 fc at Columbus. Whether crowds will follow next year remains to be seen.

The free stream destroys any need for a TV partner. Paying for the all costs in house is hurting the NHRA, they need a paid TV partner for network and streaming it's really the only way to bring large revenue into the sport. Also grants large scale sponsor exposure. The NHRA is the last of the sponsor to consumer model.

You got me on Saturday night racing and a two day national event. This would be a huge and allow for the sport to lessen team expense also

 

[Joe]

I have been going to 3 to 6 National events a year til this year. Went to Bradenton both years and going to Vegas and Galot this fall. I live 2 hours and 20 min from the Motorplex in Ennis and i stopped going on fridays as it drug out too long. Im waiting for IHRA to name its locations for next year and plan on going to several of them. Im more interested in the lower and mid tier teams.Probaly wont go to any NHRA races. The 2 day IHRA format suits me, go at 2 maybe be done by 10.

Was glad to see Jody Austin and Eric Stevens have the chance to qualify and get their FC's running better. Sure hope Larry Dixon and Dan HIx get the wins shotly.

 

[yoda]

Post in thread 'Where do you think drag racing is going for 2021?'

Aug 3, 2020

Your question prompted another question: What, if any, would the TV ratings change for a Saturday night Finals on live TV vs Sunday Finals?

I'd think live attendance would increase for a Saturday night Finals, not sure how TV would be impacted. Post-Covid, perhaps NHRA could try Saturday evening Finals to see how it goes.

You never know until you try.

Been saying this for years.
Give Sunday to the Sportsman, and let any Pro teams that want to test on Sunday get in where the show allows them to, like an exhibition run.

• yoda

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