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In todays Press Enterprise there is an article about the city of San Berdo. developing much of the Orange Show grounds.

They want to build office and industrial bulidings on much of the land.

The newspaper says the future of the racetrack is yet to be determined.

Perris Auto Speedway is dark on sat. nite Oct. 3rd.

Orange Show Speedway is racing six divisions headlined by the super late models on that nite.

It is not dirt and it is not sprint cars.

If you live in the Riverside/San Berdo. area you should come to the Orange Show sat. nite.

They put on a very well run show with some good hard racing on the 1/4 mile paved oval.

We as race fans need to support our local racetracks as much as we can.

Many racetracks close but very few new ones are ever rebuilt to replace them.

Perris Auto Speedway is not dark this Saturday, October 3rd. Lightning Sprint Cars (without the wings), Super Stocks, Modifieds, Street Stocks and Pick-A-Part Factory Stocks will all be racing on The PAS clay on Saturday. Gates open at 5:00 with racing at 5:30.

Oops!

I was looking at an old schedule dated 3/09/09.

Everything else in my post still applies.

P.S. I gave you a perfect opportunity to plug the P.A.S., sorry Scott.

No problem Wes. Press release from OSS Speedway today stated that Rick McCray has a five year contract (2009 was the first year) with a three year option in February. Lets hope racing continues on for those years and beyond. That track has been running for 62 consecutive years and would be a sad loss.

Wish something was said about Perris in the Press Enterprise , there hasnt been a mention or an advertisement in this paper in close to a year , 25 miles to the west of Perris is anywhere from 70 to 100 thousand people in the Hemet San Jacinto valley, people out here dont even know Perris is even open..Advertising in National Speedsport News has to be the biggest waste of advertising money , Full page adds for 2 or 3 weeks , 2 months before the Oval Nationals is a waste , how many people from back east are coming because of that add , if your racer you already know about the race , and if you are a sprintcar fan you already know about it . I worry about the tracks future as if it were my own and it really bothers me to see empty stands, and know that iam one of a few cars that turn left onto Romona expressway and head towards Hemet. You people at the PAS might be able to prep a dirt track , and have a good night of racing ,but your promotion SUCKS !!

Obviously, you don't know much about the ROI of a newspaper ad anymore. Also, I think you got your point across about how you feel as the PAS's promotions the first time you made the exact same post as above.

National Sprint Car & Midget Examiner
http://tinyurl.com/r4opgk

Mind explaining what A ROI is , all iam trying to say is they need to do something , people in Hemet and San Jacinto dont know whats going on out there , even the add for the farmers fair which this year is geared more towards motorsports and not concerts , doesnt even have a picture of a sprintcar , has everything but that. Ohh wait just got done reading Press Enterprise first page in , in the sports page is a daily calendar and whats going on today , looks like orange show has a full night of racing , guess Perris is dark , , Obvious you dont live in Hemet and dont know much about whats going on

Ok I thought Perris was DARK but checking around on the web i see they are open and if you bring a $5 can of food you get a ticket for next year , Promotion baby , so lets see i pick up the paper this morning , go to sports page , i read a little paragraph about Mark Martin getting the pole , little light goes off in my head , hum wonder if there is any racing tonight , i go to todays events calendar and it looks like the only track open is the Orange Show .

pace

ROI = return on investment

Grady

. 

The local newspaper industry worldwide is on its deathbed. That has been common knowledge for the past five or six years as the Internet and other forms of digital media take over. If you do not believe that, do a Google search on the Internet and read about it. You can even watch the current edition of Real Sports on HBO, which has a segment about the newspaper industry fading away.

Since January 2008, more than 120 local newspapers in the USA have folded. This includes such giants as the Rocky Mountain News in Colorado and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Other major newspapers including the Boston Globe and San Francisco Chronicle are on life support. The company that owns the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune is in bankruptcy. Why? Readership has plummeted. When readership plummets, so does the return you get for your advertising dollars. These days there are many more viable advertising options available than newspapers. Sorry, but that is just a fact of life.

The PAS used to advertise regularly in the Press Enterprise. It also advertised in the Hemet paper as well. A few years ago the ads in the Press Enterprise did reasonably well. About five years ago, in one of the local papers (not the two just mentioned, but one of the biggest local papers), The PAS had a coupon for families to come to the races for free. FREE! We are talking nearly quarter page add. We got two or three of the coupons back!

The past couple of years, The PAS has done most of (not all) it's advertising on radio. This year a majority on KCAL 96.7, the largest rock station in the Inland Empire. For the most part, it has worked. With a newspaper, you basically have one shot. Once a person is done with that newspaper and it is put in the recyclables,the ad is done for that household. On radio (TV, too, but that is extremely expensive), the spot gets played multiple times and is exposed to many more people and may of them hear it multiple times. The PAS also uses the Internet, Facebook, and now Twitter etc as well. This is the wave of the future and where more and more people, especially younger people, go every day to be informed. This is the 21^st century and this is where the new media is at. Ads also stay on these places to be seen over a period of time unlike when someone is done with the newspaper and throws it away.

You state how many people live in Hemet/San Jacinto. How many of them (and Riverside, too) get the newspaper? Take that number and ask how many of them read the sports page. How many of those who read the sports page would even consider going to a car race? Ten years ago, many more people read the newspaper and it was a different story. The numbers paid dividends back then. The rates have gone up since then and the dividends have gone down. Would you keep throwing money at something that is not working as it once did or would you try to throw it in a different direction where it works?

As far as National Speed Sport News goes, you are totally wrong on that point. Every person who reads that is a racing fan. To the point, hardcore fans for the most part. To say that is a waste of money to advertise a major event there is absolutely ridiculous. Especially when you compare its returns as compared to the local newspapers. The PAS has advertised the Oval Nationals in National Speed Sport News for years and it has worked and it still works to this day. It is the same reason the Knoxville Nationals, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Daytona, Edlora, World of Outlaws etc advertise there. It is a trade publication that works. Racetracks across the country advertise there because they get more bang for their buck on major events than a local newspaper.

You say you have not seen anything about The PAS in the Press Enterprise in over a year. They get every single press release we send out. They get our schedules. And, multiple people at that paper get them. Apparently, since we no longer advertise there, they consider The PAS none-newsworthy.

The Press Enterprise used to run a Motorsports column every Thursday. That included lots of news from the local tracks. That column has disappeared over the last year. The Press Enterprise used to cover nearly every race at The PAS. Jim Short, the noted sportswriter, covered most of the stock car events. Jim left the paper a couple of years ago when they began cutting costs. Joe Vargo, who covered military matters for the Press Enterprise, is a hardcore Sprint Car fan. He used to come out and cover every single Sprint Car race and did several features on The PAS and its drivers. He did this on his own time for FREE because he loved the sport. However, a couple years ago, the big wigs at the Press Enterprise sent an edict that would not allow writers to cover anything, but what they were assigned. Now, despite the fact that we and the Lake Elsinore baseball team are the largest drawing regular sports events in Riverside County, we will only get coverage at the Oval Nationals. However, you can bet that high school cross-country events that have three parents watching will get covered.

You want them to cover us? Let them know about it! I did last year and urged fans to do so as well over the PA at The PAS. However, myself and everyone who wrote got the same static, automated response that stated our question was important to them and they will get back to us soon. That was about 15 months ago and I, and everyone else I know who wrote, is still awaiting that response.

Coverage of local racing has dwindled in all papers including the Los Angeles Times. Shav Glick had a great column in the Times every week that covered all facets of racing for decades. When he retired Jim Peltz took it over and it came out every Friday. As the size of the Times sports section dwindled over the past few years, Peltz' column disappeared from it's pages.

Two guys have continued to faithfully cover short track racing in the greater Los Angeles area. Louie Brewster (Inland Valley Daily Bulletin) and Keith Lair (Pasadena Star News). In this age when NASCAR and "Danica" are the only Motorsports that matter in newspapers, Brewster and Lair continue to plug all of the local tracks on a weekly basis and they should be thanked at every opportunity.

Scott,

Thank you for that reply.I agree with every word you typed.

Pacecar,

Have some Faith in Donny K. I think he is doing a great job running the P.A.S. in these very tough times.

I do not have any numbers of my own, but from what I have seen this year attendance is up.

I know that there are less sprint car races this season, but there are more off road races that draw as many fans as a sprint car race(that was the case at the one I went to this year).

I would like to see more sprint car races next year.I trust Donny K., if more sprint car races will be a good thing for the P.A.S. he will do it.

As for the Press Ent. it SUCKS! The only good thing about it is , there is no good thing about it!

I stopped my sub. last month, I use the money I was giving them to help pay my internet bill(I'am losing my job of 32 years at the end of Oct.).

Keep up the good work Don K., we LOVE the P.A.S.!

Long live 410 non-winged sprint car racing on dirt!

Really good explanation by Scott on the present state of regional media, especially on the outskirts of major markets like LA. Traditional audience-building is =very= difficult now owing to the "NASCAR-NFL-NBA-MLB effect" created by the domination of broadcast and print media by the big national sports organizations. Are there solutions to the problem? I think there are.

One is combining affinity marketing with layered email address list building, a method that has worked for marketers outside the sports industry (as well as political organizers). Marketers develop email addy lists of their hard-core product purchasers, then frame their emails to those lists as vital information on upcoming events (usually promotions or price breaks or specific sales, but in this case, actual "events".) The hard-core "loyalists" are then asked to send these "important announcements" on to others they think will care about the "events."

It's a twist on the old pyramid marketing schemes, but without any arm-twisting or direct selling. The ostensible dynamic is "friend-informing-friend," and it works if the informational emails induce new readers to contact the original source to get a coupon or some other item of value (even if the cost to the advertiser is minimal). The new readers are then added to the ever-growing email lists. If the product is sufficiently rewarding (in the PAS's case by being an exciting evening's entertainment on the comparative cheap), the lists and the responses grow just as they did for both political parties during the 2000, 2004 and 2008 elections.

Another method that works well in conjunction with this is built on value perception and aggressive discounting. Simplified, the marketer upgrades the =image= (and, therefore, perceived value) of his product usually by working with people who know how to manipulate visual and aural imagery to be just a little more palatable to a wider audience than the responders to the marketer's current imagery. It's a finesse thing, but it's done all the time, and is actually exactly what NASCAR did in the late '90s and early '00s. (They went a bit less "macho" and more "family entertainment," as well as "sexy boy race driver" for the girlies. Argue please that =that= didn't work.)

Once the images are established, the marketer raises his product (in this case, ticket) price... then immediately discounts the price to his loyalists. The marketer retains his loyalists while continuing to frame his product as being of higher quality (read "more desirable" ) to new customers. Most of the new customers will pay full-fair (at least for a while), then, if they become loyalists themselves, find the discount offers. Tour & travel and major attraction marketers (e.g.: Disneyland) have been using this approach successfully for 30 years that I know of (because I have been one of them).

There are other techniques, as well, but my purpose here is simply to illustrate that where there's sufficient will, there's a way. And then say, "Ask Jim Naylor."

come on Wes look at the bright the Press Ent is great for wrapping dead fish or linning a bird cage!

I to used to bitch about the lack of promoting from the PAS &USAC,but after thinking about how in the hell in SoCal do you promote and get an ROI?too many news papers,too many radio stations and too much other stuff going on,and who is your target?young people,ol pharts, Riverside, LA, Orange, San Berdo, San Diego Counties?

ROB

First off i care about the PAS as if it was mine and i have stated that before ,I have never seen an add for the Orange Show in the Press Ent yet their press releases make it . There is a paper in the Hemet called the Valley Cronical , i have never paid for this paper but it is a friday only paper and it is in my driveway every fri for free , and i believe most of hemet get it , lots of people i know get it and read it. radio adds i myself have had Serius sat radio for close to 4 years , I never listen to regular radio . And as for the NSSN add , put a free coupon in there and see what you get . I dont know what else to say or what the answer is and i will stop my rant , iam just a concerned fan .

Another freebie: Announce over the PA during the breaks in the action (i.e.: when it's relatively quiet) that fans who want to can stop by the concessions booth and sign up to get "insider email" from the PAS on upcoming events and promotions. Only people who =want= such email will sign up, of course. Then utilize the affinity marketing scheme I described in my previous post with admonitions to "pass this email on to other race fans" and invite =them= to sign up for PAS email.

This may or may not work, of course (tho I'll be surprised, based on past experience, if it doesn't), but at least you will have experimented with this method and determined if it may work with a little tweak here or there.

"Reward or ignore; never punish." -- automotive aftermarket whiz-bang / retired cheesecake icon Linda O'Neil.

pacecar,how about you come at this from a different angle....your a subsciber to a local newspaper..why not call them and ask why they don't 'cover' local events like the races at Perris..tell them you get your national news from the internet but you rely on their paper to tell you of the local events..as far as 'freebies ' goes Perris has done it's share..the Fair race is a perfect example...they'll loose their butts that night ..but hopefully they'll get some new fans...Promoting Races has never been for the weak at heart..glad to see their are still people willing to meet the challenge

Very well put together explanation Scott. We all know that every racer has a following of crew, friends, family and groupies (or Divas). This core of followers multiplied by the number of cars from all classes is what a track promoter depends on race after race to pay the bills. The best promotion a track can ever do is propagate those numbers. Passing out coupons at the track exit builds those returning fans. Cheap, effective and cost little. The fans are already hooked on racing, bring a friend next time. How about every ten ticket stubs presented at the window gets you in free! The idea that the racing fans you already have are your best advertisers for new fans.

Ok, I wasn't going to say something but now I can't resist.

Pacecar, if you read the newspapers or watch TV you would already know that newspapers & magazines are going away. With the Internet who needs a newspaper except for coupon Sundays? 4 major magazines folded this week. It's sad but hey, that's progress, or so they say.

If you really want to get more people to the PAS, then why don't you bring your family, friends and neighbors? When I lived in Phoenix, I wrote a column there for this website and another. Every year, at the beginning of the season, I challenged everyone to bring someone new to the track each time they come out. I can honestly say that I do this on a regular basis. Fans are the most important thing to have at the track and in my opinion, if we want to continue to see non winged sprint cars then it's up to US-THE FANS- to help bring more people out.

PAS does advertise on radio stations which is great. As someone else stated, radio advertising is a great way to advertise. You get more bang for your buck in radio advertising.

So, in view of this.. I'M ISSUING A CHALLENGE TO EVERYONE WHO READS THIS MESSAGE BOARD. If you want to keep Perris alive so we have great facility that has a great sanction for NON WINGED SPRINT CAR RACING, then start bringing someone new to each race. I try to. There are some weeks I'm really successful and others that I'm not, but at least I try. Mr. Pacecar, have you?

This weekend is a perfect weekend to introduce someone to sprint car racing. $5 to get in to do the fair and see some great racing, its a win-win situation. How many people who are struggling financially will be able to afford it this weekend. I'm telling everyone I know about it.

Scott, thanks for explaining things. I learned something new from reading this thread this morning.

Have a great day everyone and remember my challenge-bring a rookie to the sprint car races this Saturday.

RIP Chet and Mark.  You might be gone but never will 
be forgotten.