Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
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I have read a couple different things about who owns these two streaming services and how many subscribers they have. Anyone know the facts?

Dirtvision is owned by WRG, same owners for Woo sprints and late models, Super Dirt Car, and a few tracks. They built all this technology in-house and have their own WRG employees running this operation.

Flosports, which includes FloRacing is owned by Mark Floreani. Flo Racing is just one portion of their business model. 

From their website -FloSports is a world-class sports media company strategically positioned to be the essential destination for passionate sports fans, delighting them with live event coverage, breaking news, highlights, stats, rankings, and team and player profiles. We are growing Our Sports every day by continuing to invest in our ever-expanding ecosystem, which consists of over a dozen sports verticals and hundreds of streaming partners. FloSports is creating the home for sports like hockey, track & field, racing, grappling, wrestling, cheer, and more, and we are looking for innovative and passionate people like you to help us!

As far as subscribers for each, that is company confidential information and I don't think you will see those numbers published. 

Excellent. When a person does a search there is so much informartion it is often confusing and some of it is not based on facts. Much of it is old. Some very old.

How about some speculation on subscriber numbers?

Might be difficult to figure out FloRacing subscriber numbers.  When you subscribe there you're actually subscribing to FloSports and have access to all of the sporting events that they cover.  So no one specifically subscribes to FloRacing, or FloWrestling, or FloHockey, etc. (even if they only watch one sport).

Signature here.

FloSports, the owner of FloRacing has several, some articles say 9, investor groups.

From Wikipedia:

FloSports was founded in 2006^[2] by Martin Floreani, Mark Floreani (collegiate athletes), and Madhu Venkatesan based in Austin, Texas. The company raised $8 million in Series A and a further $21 million in Series B financing in 2016 led by DCM Ventures and Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments.

January 2019 from Variety:

FloSports, a provider of live-streaming and on-demand niche sports programming, announced a $47 million Series C funding round, led by current investor Discovery.

The round, which brings FloSports to $75 million raised to date, also included participation from other existing FloSports investors WWE, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, Causeway Media Partners, DCM Ventures, and Fertitta Capital, the investment firm of former UFC owners Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta,  FloSports claims to have “several hundred thousand” subscribers, declining to be more specific. 

DirtVision is owned by the World Racing Group which since 2009 has been a privately held corporation.  

Oh I understand that. It really makes me wonder about their true numbers. The TV networks all release viewer numbers. Now if they are honest one will never know.  Their advertising revenue depends on those numbers.  I never turn my Direct TV DVR off so it appears always on some channels 24/7/365 although I am not watching it. So is this reported as viewing these shows?  How about when I record shows? I have two channels and often it is recording two shows while I watch another which was recorded. I seldom watch live stuff or commercials. Sorry advertisers.

May places claim that Streming Services do not make money for many years. The cost of setting one up and ongoing costs have to be huge. Add in maintaining and allowing access to a large library of videos takes a lot of storage space and computer power.

Without knowing some numbers it is hard to speculate on how much money they have to pay HL and WoO or others.

Personally I don't think either one is good for the sport.  Many, including me, now watch from a recliner, from that recliner you can't see who is sponsoring teams. If you can't see a sponsor then how do you support the advertising ? So if the stands have less fans attending a sponsor is going to look elsewhere.  It sucks when you get to retirement age and your body doesn't co operate. 

Interesting points.  The sponsor names on the cars are nearly impossible to see in person. I miss the programs that tracks used to sell. I'm not a Facebook or social media person and won't be ever. Most racers websites suck and are out of date. I think the majority of sponsors do not really care if people see their names. Tax write off either way.

I am going to be 68 this month and I still prefer beinging there. What Flo & DirtVision allow me to do is watch many races I would not see otherwise.  I watched the Tulsa Shootout the past few days. I would not have seen any of it otherwise. It was very interesting but long. I don't know how most people could watch it in person due to the length.  I will watch the Chili Bowl and 410 Nationals most likely. Again events that are too long for me to go to in person.  I will still go to events that are a reasonable drive from my home. Only ones I have not committed to in my mind is WoO/IRA 410 at Wilmont. If one of my friends wants to go I'm more likely to go. It is a long ride by myself. Other events my buddies will go along. That weekend just does not fit the others schedules very well typically.

I'll encourge you to get out of the recliner and go to any shows that you can realisticly drive to like me.

The 2021 DirtCar Nationals Partnership Opportunities deck said there were 40,000 subscribers to DirtVision. So I'd say that was (at the time) probably the highest calculation of subscribers, not necessarily 40,000 people buying every month all year. But 40k spent at least $39 at one point during the year (all just speculation on my part). Even still, if that's 40,000 people buying just one month of DirtVision, that's $1.5mil in revenue.  But we'll never know the true calcuation of that number, it could have been 40,000 subscriptions since their inception. Who knows. 

https://web.archive.org/web/20200920193529/https://volusiaspeedwaypark.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/04/2021_DCN_Sponsor_Template.pdf 

There's a bit of confusion here about how TV ratings are calculated. TV networks don't report and release viewer numbers themselves. TV ratings are calculated by a company named Nielsen, who give devices to participating homes to track TV viewing data. Nielsen then use this data to estimate the number of viewers (as well as demographic numbers) across the United States. Your DirectTV box/DVR habits would not affect TV ratings unless you have a Nielsen device in your home.

As far as streaming viewership numbers, that's not public information. I would think that DirtVision and FloRacing are both profitable though, both services have expanded greatly over the years and I doubt either company would be putting as much money and resources as they have if the services weren't profitable.

Additionally, I think FloRacing is probably one of the most valuable parts of FloSports at this time. Flo is constantly investing in additional content (such as the DIRT docseries last year) that you don't see on the other areas of FloSports like FloHockey or FloWrestling. Plus, they literally have an ownership stake in High Limit and also put on the Castrol FloRacing Night in America on the late model side of things. So they're highly invested in motorsports, which would probably mean that that's what their subscribers are watching.

Ask Frank

GET out to your local track before it's GONE!!!!  The way I see it, it will be a race to see who can buy the most tracks up before they close scenario!!! Anyone wanna wager on what HL buys 1st????

I'm not sure I understand. Who's going to buy  up all the tracks, and why?

Actually yes there's a Co named and I may have this spelled wrong called CARPORT or  something similar. They are a auto recycling Co  who are openly targeting motorsports facilities to set up shop. They almost bought Grandview but they did buy I believe I 80 an asphalt track and a dragstrip. These are places all over the US.

Interesting and somewhat old information. Direct TV knows everything people watch and use it to sell advertising.  Cable companies also know what you have tuned in to and also use it to sell advertising. Nielsen has made many changes to try to keep up.

Copart, the big junkyard company.  They've bought a few tracks as part of expanding their business.  Tracks check a lot of their boxes apparently - lots of space, semi-rural, already have contaminated soil issues.