Are Rising Fuel Costs Driving Fans out of the Stands?

March 25, 2008
By Allen Madding

Allen Madding

NASCAR is a sport that relies on fans driving several hundred miles to watch a race. Many volumes have been written about the rising costs of tickets and there are some rumblings about the rising costs of the camping facilities at the tracks. But the big question at hand is how is $3.10+ a gallon gas and $4 a gallon diesel impacting the fans.

Despite the appearances last week at Bristol, I have received several reports that the grandstands were not completely full. Area ticket scalpers buying up remaining tickets augmented the apparent sellout. Several readers noted that they had extra tickets they could not sell even at pennies on the dollar asking prices.

This week was an off week for the Sprint Cup Series, but the Nationwide Series held its first stand-alone event for the season and ticket sales were down. The track reported a drop in sales of 14 percent. Nashville Superspeedway ticket staff increased their promotional efforts to try to negate the impact that the slowing economy and the rising price of fuel would have on their ticket sales for the event. Last year the track coupled with Kroger and Pepsi giving a five-dollar discount for bringing a Pepsi can to the ticket window. This year the track increased the discount to ten dollars. One has to wonder how bad the hit would have been without the stepped up promotions.

In the past year, fuel prices have increased on a national average of 70 cents a gallon. AAA has reported that the rising fuel costs have curtailed a lot of family vacations and holiday travel, and families are opting for short-range travel or staying close to home.

Nashville Superspeedway reports that they typically draw fans from a 250-mile range around the facility in Lebanon, Tennessee. Based on that mileage, a typical family would spend $63 just on the fuel to get to the track and back home. Add in $45-$65 per person for a ticket, lodging expenses, and meals, and the cost of a weekend outing suddenly tallies up around $300. Couple theses costs with the slowing economy and unemployment rate, and it suddenly becomes obvious that the amount of empty seats at NASCAR racetracks is something we will be seeing for quite sometime to come.

NASCAR tracks are going to have to figure out how to make their events more economically attractive to their fan base by holding down the costs of grandstand tickets and offering affordable alternatives for lodging. The rising fuel costs practically eliminate the idea of taking an RV that gets 6 mpg to a racetrack 250 miles from home when the round trip would cost $265 or more in fuel. Tracks might need to consider to lowering or even eliminating the charge for unimproved (no electricity, no water, no sewer hook-ups) camping spots for ticket holders.

The communities that are home to NASCAR tracks also need to consider how they can help soften to blow to race fans. The loss of tickets at the racetracks equates to loss of community income from lodging and dining industries. Most tracks are several miles from hotels. Cities like Atlanta that have mass transit that do not serve the racing facilities might need to rethink the logic in their services. Filling the grandstands seats while the American family is taking the hit of rising fuel costs and slowing economy will take some creativity on the part of track management and their local and state governments.

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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