Bristol: No Empty Seats Here

March 20, 2008
By Allen Madding

Allen Madding

Many writers and fans have noted the amount of empty seats at NASCAR’s adopted standard 1.5-mile tri-oval cookie cutter racetracks over the last few years. But when the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series took the green flag at Bristol Sunday, it was apparent that there were no empty seats at Thunder Valley. For years, the half-mile track at the Tennessee/Virginia state line has been the track where all NASCAR fans want to see their favorite drivers compete.

For its first event in 1961, Bristol seated 18,000. In the 1990’s Bristol provided 71,000 seats, and the track maintained a two-year waiting list for seats. Demand was trumping supply at America’s fastest half-mile track. The track’s seating was soon expanded to 84,000, and all of the seats were quickly sold out as fast as prior to the expansion. Bristol currently seats around 160,000 and has not needed to resort to the trickery of the 1.5-mile tracks which have started painting their seats random colors in hopes that television cameras panning by at racing speeds will make it hard to detect how many seats are empty.

What’s the appeal at Bristol?

It certainly is not the over abundance of hotel rooms close to the track. The immediate vicinity only holds 6,000 hotel rooms, so the bulk of the NASCAR fans are driving an hour or more to a hotel room or camping on the grounds in recreation vehicles or tents. Bristol’s appeal has never had to do with accoutrements. Even now after Bruton Smith and Speedway Motorsports has spent over $180 million upgrading the facilities, Bristol’s appeal is on the track and has been since it opened in 1961. The 60 feet wide straight-aways and 75 feet wide 36 degree banked turns have provided the type of racing that NASCAR fans have always loved to see - tight side-by-side, bump and run, tire rubbing, paint scuffing racing.

So why did International Speedway Corp. (NASCAR’s property company) and Speedway Motorsports (Bruton Smith’s company) spend so much money reconfiguring Atlanta and building California, Texas, Las Vegas and Kansas to fit the Charlotte and Michigan track designs? Both companies thought it was the best configuration for NASCAR-style racing. It also provided them the amount of real estate around the racetrack to build condos, impressive corporate suites, and executive Recreational Vehicle viewing plateaus. Much to their surprise and chagrin, both companies have had a difficult time selling out 160,000 seats at those tracks despite the millions of dollars they have invested in building these mega-showplaces.

Instead, for years the bulk of the fans have wrestled to get tickets to a little half-mile bullring in the outskirts of Appalachia with high school gymnasium style bathrooms and limited menu offerings at the concession stands. And were quite pleased just to be able to get into the event.

The six figure marketing types missed the boat with their predictions. ISC and SMI could have made money by building a few more tracks with character like Bristol, Martinsville and Richmond and a few less of the 1.5-mile cookie cutter tracks. The fans were not staying at home because they wanted a five star restaurant overlooking the track.

They were not waiting for RV spots that cost $3,500 a weekend overlooking the track. They were not even waiting for clean bathrooms that did not back up by the halfway point in the event. NASCAR fans are willing and waiting in line to buy tickets to tracks where the racing is side by side and bump and grind. That little bullring at Bristol was the diamond in the rough all along.

How did the big money types miss the winning formula?

The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.

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