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Champ Car Rant The Sluggernaut |
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A Champ Car Blog by Ed Donath
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Cairo, NY -- What effect has the current fuel cost crisis had on your driving habits, discretionary travel and spending?
"With Americans digging deeper to pay at the pump, some NASCAR tracks are seeing more empty seats and empty sites at their campgrounds, where thousands of RV owners park their gas-guzzling rigs on race weekends," writes Jim Peltz in the 6/19/08 edition of the Los Angeles Times.
Peltz diligently contacted all of stock car racing's large venues and, while most of the track operators were reluctant to be precise about their attendance losses, the conservative estimate is that there have been at least 10% fewer rednecks in the grandstands thus far in 2008.
To put that loss in perspective, subtract 12,500 free-spending fans from the usual 125,000 who attend, say, Michigan Speedway. Do the lost-revenue math in ticket and pit pass sales, refreshments and trinkets. Now trickle it down to the local bars, restaurants, hotels, tourist attractions, gas stations, etc. and multiply by the number of towns the NASCAR juggernaut will visit.
It is unlikely that economic stimulus checks -- if we ever get them -- will help much. Speedway managers generally agree, according Jim Peltz, that "It might get worse. Many fans buy their tickets and make travel arrangements well in advance of race dates, so the full impact of $4-plus-a-gallon gasoline on attendance might not be felt until NASCAR's fall races."
If the juggernaut is suffering just imagine the devastating effect the gas crisis will have on f-inheritor. Does the MINO * version of American open-wheel racing have any chance of impacting NASCAR's success as the cost of fuel and living increases?
Actually, if the Good Old Boys were to strategically extend their marketing tentacles to help themselves through the current attendance crisis they would, in the process, crush the f-inheritor sluggernaut.
Door prizes like mortgage pay-offs for race day ticket holders might help sluggish speedway attendance but it will be NASCAR's off-track Sunday afternoon efforts that will keep it healthy. With lagging venue attendance TV will be more important than ever for the survival of the fittest in motor sports.
What if half of NASCAR's stay-at-home regular ticket buyers could be lured to cross-promotional TV events at sponsoring restaurant chains on Sunday afternoons?
What if a cross-promotional beer sponsor were thrown into the mix?
What if the local venue door prize, prominently announced on TV, was something like the payoff of a lucky restaurant attendee's Lowe's credit card balance or an all expenses-paid trip to the Daytona 500?
Race attendance and TV ratings are both huge factors in motor sports success but it is the sponsors that pay the bills for racing participants.
Very few sponsors care about fans in the stands as long as the TV audience remains stable. If TV audience were actually to grow as a result of gas crisis stay-at-home marketing the juggernaut could become stronger than ever while the sluggernaut would just fade into oblivion.
* Mergified in Name Only |
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