Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

Assuming we can get back to racing by July 1...Do you think any of the purses for the major races will be reduced?  Tracks bascilly will have lost half there season if not more...Not sure how Williams Grove or Port could pay out the 50,0000+ purses at the end of the year.

That would imply those events on their own are money losers, which I doubt.

I would probably doubt that as well, but who knows - PA may be profitable on weekly shows at their larger tracks.

I've always heard that for Knoxville the Nationals revenue helps to offset the rest of the season, so that to me would infer that the weekly programs are ran at a loss. 

The Kville example imo is much more likely, and is the opposite direction. Doesn't Knoxville pay the best purses of weekly shows? It could be the case they decide to pay those high weekly purses using part of the profits from the nats. 

I would think that Port Royal is profitiable on most of their weekly shows.  Williams Grove I think the only way they make a profit for the year is the Outlaw shows...Another reason for my original post, I hate to say it but I think we will lose a percentage of crowds and teams this year due to the finical hardship that many people are having to endure.  

Something I've been thinking, especially now that we've added yet another month to the quarantine, is the fact that most tracks have to pay a sizeable lease or mortgage, not to mention minimal upkeep costs.  It's hard to do that if you're not generating any income whatsoever.  I'm afraid there are going to be a number of facilities that quite simply cannot weather this storm.

Privately owned tracks are probably the most at risk of shutting their gates.  Fairgrounds tracks might have a better chance of getting some relief from their Fair boards.  Sponsors and owners who's businesses are shut down and forced to lay off employees may have to scale back or withdraw their support.  Which those will be is hard to predict without knowing their financial status.  

One rule of thumb will be to think back to what happened in 2008.  My local tracks suffered the most losing a lot of competitors in their lower classes.  They were the people who fielded entry class cars by working small businesses and racing as a hobby and bring out a lot of family and friends every weekend.  One of the Stock car classes used to run four Heats, a B Main and Feature with car counts hitting the mid 40's before 2008.  After the crash fields struggled to hit 20.  They aren't Sprint Cars but they're the classes that keep the gates open between Sprint specials.

It will be interesting to see how many businesses are forced to pull out of racing and how many are able to make good on promises made prior to our current mess.  Some are essential and will keep operating but others will be coming off a month or longer shut down.  If a race car has the name of the neighborhood bar on their wing and the bar had to shut down I wouldn't be surprised to see them put their support of racing on hold.  That's business 101 to curtail unesssary expenses when times get tough.

Stan Meissner

Agree.  Great point.

I hope the cars can show up----assuming we get the green light. 

Also good points

We probably will not be able to know the answer to that until next season. The thing that is different with racing with respect to other sports is that there are a lot of moving parts that need to happen just to make the show happen. You have tracks, promoters/sanctioning bodies, drivers, owners, sponsors, and fans that are needed in order to make a show happen and all of them have to have money in their pockets in some respect in order to get the show on the track. The longer this goes, the worst for all individuals not only health wise but economically. I think I said in a previous thread that the struggle I have is the science part of me is saying that what is going on now, social distancing and limiting groups of people to assemble, is the right thing to do to stop this from spreading. The economist side of me is saying our country as well as a majority of other country's economic system is not built to handle something like this and I'm not talking about the stock market.

Think of some of the demographics of the companies that help support racing. If they are not effected yet then they might come June or July even if this ends by the end of April (Don't think it will). A lot of people will not have money to even pay their household bills, let alone discretionary income. That means companies will not be getting money and tracks may not be getting money in two aspects, fans and sponsors. The division of the company I work for supports nutrional health products to hospitals and grocery stores. We just had a call today about be prepared to talk about pricing with our suppliers because we may need to work with each other in order to keep each other afloat, specifically the supplier. I think the tracks, sanctioning bodies, manufacturers, builders, owners, promoters and everyone involved need to work with each other for the overall health of the sport. If someone tries to continue to try to get a bigger piece of the pie they may find that there is not much left to take and may need to approach it as how do we make the pie bigger