November 16, 2007
By Allen Madding

Allen Madding

This past week, Bruton Smith and Speedway Motorsports Inc., purchased New Hampshire International Speedway, which currently plays host to two NASCAR Nextel Cup Series events each season. A great deal of speculation has been made over the last few days since the announcement of the sale. Many wonder what Speedway Motorsports plans are with New Hampshire and how it will affect the company’s other holdings. Others say that it was simply a move to add an additional income stream to the already profitable company. Could there be ulterior motives to the purchase?

Speedway Motorsports currently owns Atlanta Motor Speedway, Bristol Motor Speedway, Infineon Raceway, Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Lowes Motor Speedway, and Texas Motor Speedway. All of Speedway Motorsports holdings host two NASCAR Nextel Cup Series events with the exception of Las Vegas and Infineon. If Speedway Motorsports wanted to add a second race date to one of its current holdings, it would be quite obvious that Las Vegas would be the facility that would be the most profitable and desirable.

Las Vegas Motor Speedway seats 137,000 as opposed to New Hampshire’s 91,000 seats. Las Vegas also has numerous amenities that are unique to the facility to bring in more revenue beyond ticket sales. Remember that Speedway Motorsports and the Bahre family that then owned New Hampshire purchased North Wilkesboro Speedway in order to strip the track of its two NASCAR Cup Series dates and to reallocate one of those dates to New Hampshire and the other to Texas Motor Speedway.

Now that Speedway Motorsports owns New Hampshire, it does not take too much of a stretch of the imagination to consider that they could quite easily move one of New Hampshire’s dates to Las Vegas. It is also worth noting that Las Vegas sold out for the running of the UAW-Daimler Chrysler 400 in March of this year. While New Hampshire sold out in June of this year, a sell out at Las Vegas includes an additional 46,000 more tickets sold than New Hampshire.

Now do a little math. Las Vegas Cup tickets sell for $120 each. 46,000 times 120 equals $5,520,000. So based on ticket sales alone, a sell out at Las Vegas is worth five and a half million dollars more than one at New Hampshire. That coupled with the revenues from the slot machines and other amenities on the property makes it a real no brainer that the second date at Las Vegas would be more profitable to Speedway Motorsports as opposed to a second date at New Hampshire.

Bruton Smith and the staff of Speedway Motorsports are keenly aware of the value of a second date for Las Vegas Motor Speedway and five and a half million dollars additional profit for any company is a huge motivation for a business decision. The racing public will be watching the news coming out from the corporate headquarters in Concord, North Carolina for the next several weeks to see what changes come about with the recent acquisition.

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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