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Buying Race Tickets? Shop Around

An Opinion



February 20, 2009

By Doug Demmons


Doug Demmons
If you bought Christmas gifts last year at anything less than 30 percent off you’re a chump with a capital C.

Likewise, if you pay full price for tickets, hotel rooms, etc. for a NASCAR race this year you can just stamp a big “C” on your forehead and flush those hard-earned dollars.

Panic has already set in at race tracks across America at the prospect of thousands and thousands of empty seats. And since empty seats do not buy souvenirs or hot dogs, discounts are now the rule rather than the exception.

Gone are the days when tracks could charge whatever they wanted. Gone are the waiting lists. Gone are the days when hotels could make up for the rest of the year by gouging race fans.

The cratering economy, layoffs by the hundreds of thousands and disappearing sponsors have sobered up NASCAR. Long drunk on the cash that fans and TV networks have thrown at the sport for years, the bar tab has come due.

Daytona sold out all but infield tickets -- but only after slashing prices. Track president Robin Braig told reporters that the sight of empty seats at NFL playoff games and reports that DisneyWorld was slashing prices caused them to panic and cut their own prices. It was only then, he said, that the phones started to ring.

Atlanta Motor Speedway sold 1,000 tickets for $17 each in honor of Matt Kenseth’s win at Daytona and sold them out in 15 minutes on Monday. Lowe’s Motor Speedway outside of Charlotte offered 1,700 tickets Tuesday at a 5-for-$50 rate.

What’s next -- free tickets with the purchase of a T-shirt?

Of course, these are still gimmicks. Discounting 1,000 or so seats in less-desirable grandstands is like offering up end-zone seats or seats in the right-field bleachers.

That’s good for right now but it won’t get tracks through the season. Because things are going to get worse before they get better. Sad to say, but it is true.

You see, it’s not just that your average fans are cutting back. It’s those large blocks of seats bought by corporate sponsors that are not being renewed. Those are not coming back anytime soo

In fact, it’s entirely plausible that sponsorship agreements signed a year or more ago that will be expiring soon won’t be renewed. Team sponsorships, especially in the truck series, aren’t faring much better.

The truck series is like the canary in the NASCAR coal mine. Todd Bodine won at Daytona in an unsponsored truck. If his Germain team doesn’t find a backer soon he’ll likely have to park it.

This week’s race at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, Calif., has 37 trucks on the entry list, which is better than was anticipated, but nine of those trucks were unsponsored as of Tuesday, including defending champion Johnny Benson. And a number of those trucks are nothing more than field fillers.

That’s how it’s going to be this year -- a season of teams trying to survive and tracks hunkering down.

But for fans it presents an opportunity to be courted, to be wooed, to be appreciated. This is the year that the tracks and the hotels need you more than you need them.

So for heaven’s sake, don’t pay what you paid last year. Shop around, surf the travel sites like Orbitz and Travelocity and don’t book too early. Some of the best deals will be available a week or so before the race when panic sets in.

You’ve paid through the nose for years because you had no choice.

Now the tracks are the ones with no choice.




Doug Demmons is a writer and editor for the Birmingham News ~ he writes daily and weekly auto racing columns ranging from NASCAR to open wheel to Formula One, local tracks and more... you can read Doug's columns online at Blog of Tommorow


You can contact Doug Demmons at .... Birmingham News

You Can Read Other Articles By Doug Demmons


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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