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

Does anyone know if the 360 Nationals can be viewed online next week?

Dirtvision fast pass. 

Not through fast pass as you will have to pay $39.00 for the entire weekend.  Still a decent deal 

It has the Fast Pass logo on the schedule and I also clicked the watch link and it states that I have access to the event as a Fast Pass subscriber. 

I am pretty sure that changed.....per a Tweet that DirtVision put out 2 days ago. 

The DV FastPass subscription will get you the 360 Nationals at no additional cost.    The FastPass does cost $39/month but you should get every single WoO Sprint, LM and Knoxville show during that month.   

And Williams Grove and Attica weekly shows. A great deal no doubt.

     In past years people were always talking about the 360 Nationals crowd being on the small side- by Knoxville standards, anyway. Presumably, the 360 Nationals are still being held because they can dispurse that smaller crowd around the big grandstands. Do you think the junk we're-tired-of-hearing-about will produce a much bigger crowd than in the past?

May be wrong but I doubt it. Was kind of talking to a buddy about this the other night when I saw a $30 PPV cost for the Ultimate Challenge - 360s just are not worth that to me.

ASCS is very weak right now IMO, Knoxville 360s are in pretty good shape and I know for the 360 Nationals you get plenty of 410 drivers dropping down to steal the big purse, but the reality is that it's still a 360 show. I know they produce some pretty good racing and I used to get somewhat frustrated when they seemingly got disrespected by fans but now I kind of get it. I'm way more interested in the IronMan that weekend. 

I don't think you'll see a larger crowd than normal, but I could be wrong.

While it is still "just" a 360 show, there is some great racing to be seen.  It pales in comparison to the 410 Nationals in part because there isn't nearly the hoopla surrounding the 360's that there is for the 410's.  In town, it almost feels like a regular race night ratcheted up a notch.  Nothing like the full-throttle party that is the 410 weekend.  The purse is so much lower that the pressure level on the drivers is also lower.  Add $50 or $100K to the overall purse and that might take the pressure level up a notch.  And during the 360 weekend, everyone knows the "big one" is coming up, so you don't want to over indulge too much before the 410 week starts.

If the 360 weekend were your only "Nationals" race weekend, the excitement level would be much higher, but still short of the 410 weekend.  At least I think it would be.....

I'm happy that they added the 360 Nationals to Fast Pass.  If they had not done that I'd have simply found another race to watch between my subscriptions to Floracing and Dirtvision.  Last night there were something like six choices that I could have watched on a Wednesday night.  I settled for a race in PA, think it was Lincoln that had a few visiting Outlaws among the competitors and David Gravel won it.  As connected as I am to Knoxville knowing a few drivers and owners that frequent the place I prefer watching every week but with all this other racing to fall back on I am done paying for specific races that aren't included in the events covered under the monthly subscription price.  It's up to the PPV channels if they want to charge extra for some events but I'm a fan first of Sprints and secondly Late Models so there is a ton of content to fall back on if I want to watch another race without paying extra.  I spent years following lineups on Twitter while listening to the audio and could easily do that while watching another race.

One positive thing I have noticed with racing PPV is that it's morphing over to more of a streaming racing channel format as opposed to the old PPV model.  PPV for those of you who didn't have cable back in the 80's and 90's became the  popular term for single view sports events like wrestling and boxing.  They would have a big cage match and charge an arm and a leg to rent the PPV on our cable systems.  Today people are accustomed to and expect channels to offer more content than one single high priced event which is where the PPV model had it's origins.  One thing I have noticed on Floracing and Dirtvision is that they are running commercials which in effect would make the service more affordable if they are able to generate revenue in that way which in turn will keep the costs down for subscribers.  I have absolutely no problem with sitting through commercials if it's going to help get these channels to a price point that people can actually afford.  This morphing to a more conventional and contemporary streaming model similar to a Hulu or Netflix where our monthly charge brings us all the content available on the channel puts dirt track racing in a position to expand it's coverage.  Dirt track racing will never grow much bigger if every fan has to drive all over hell and attend every race in person.  The ideal thing in my mind would be for one of these channels to get to the point where cable, satellite and streaming channels pick one of these services up and offer it as part of their channel package.  That's probably wishful thinking but I'd like to see that.  After all, I had ESPN in the mid 80's when I first signed up for cable and I watched a ton of dirt track racing there and on TNN.  We took a big step forward then an even bigger step backwards before these present day streaming services showed up on the scene.

Anyways, I'm over analyzing the whole deal so I'll just sum it up by saying that me and the cats are happy that we will be watching the 360 Nationals in the cat cave.

Stan Meissner