December 30, 2010
By Doug Demmons
Last week I was invited to appear on the Sirius Speedway show on Sirius satellite radio to talk about a column I wrote for this site as it relates to the state of short tracks.
Naturally, I was asked what my solution was for the precarious state of many short tracks these days. There was enough time to discuss just one idea -- a radical re-invention of the business model for short tracks that would cultivate a new (i.e. younger) generation of race fans.
Racing hasn’t lost its appeal to younger fans, but stock car racing as it currently exists has. Kids today are turned on by things like extreme motocross and drifting. They go to short tracks mostly if their parents bring them.
That doesn’t mean every dirt track should start a drifting series. But it does mean they should start looking for ways to bring in younger fans.
The key to that seems to be the word “extreme.” It’s what made the X Games as popular as it is. Kids seem to gravitate toward sports that lay it all on the line.
And that’s quite ironic, since auto racing used to be one of the most death-defying sports around. Ernest Hemingway famously said once that there are only three sports -- bull fighting, mountain climbing and auto racing -- and everything else was just a game.
All three of Hemingway’s sports involved the risk of death or great physical harm. But racing isn’t quite as death-defying as it once was thanks to safety innovations.
Have HANS devices and SAFER barriers hurt the appeal of NASCAR? Perhaps. No one wants to go back to the bad ole days when drivers were killed or seriously injured on a regular basis.
But there is more to a sport’s popularity than bloodlust. The NFL, the NBA and Major League Baseball don’t rely on death or dismemberment to attract big ratings.
What those sports rely on is geography and regional pride, a concept totally lacking in racing. You cheer for and follow the Oakland Raiders because you live in the Bay Area. You cheer for the Tennessee Titans because you live in the Nashville area, etc. etc.
It’s a formula that has worked for more than a century. Yankees fans hate the Red Sox not because they hate the individual players on Boston’s team but because it is New York vs. Boston.
NASCAR doesn’t work that way. NASCAR depends on fan loyalty to individual drivers and is, therefore, dependent on those drivers having sufficient skill and/or personality to attract fans.
But what if stock car racing could be like baseball or the NFL with regional teams? Could that be the answer? Could it even work?
Short answer: It could. And here’s one possible scenario:
Take the ARCA Series.
ARCA has been around about as long as NASCAR. But the series has never broken out into the public consciousness as a major player. The major reason is because it is only sporadically on TV.
ARCA is the perfect laboratory for an experiment. So let’s re-invent ARCA.
Let’s abandon the independent team concept that NASCAR embraces and switch to a franchise system. Let’s award 14 franchises to team owners.
Each franchise receives exclusive rights over a geographic territory. Let’s say that Venturini Motorsports is awarded a franchise for the state of Alabama and becomes the Alabama Gangsters.
The Gangsters -- as well as every other franchise -- would field three cars in each race. That makes a field of 42 cars for each race.
For each race there would be an individual winner and a team winner. The team win would be determined by adding up the points for each team member. The team whose three drivers accumulates the most points wins.
Points and standings would be for teams only. When the Alabama Gangsters go to Atlanta Motor Speedway to compete against the hometown Georgia Elliotts, it would be Alabama vs. Georgia with regional pride on the line.
There would be hometowns. Each franchise would pick two tracks as their home tracks. The Gangsters, for instance, could select Talladega Superspeedway and Montgomery Motor Speedway as their tracks. Both tracks -- assuming they meet minimum standards -- would be automatically added to the ARCA schedule twice in a season and the Gangsters would have exclusive rights to test at those tracks.
That means each franchise picks two tracks that will receive two ARCA races each year -- for a total of 28 races each year -- and the exclusive-testing feature gives each franchise a home-field advantage.
A racing series with regional teams and -- more importantly -- regional rivalries would be far more likely to land a TV deal than a series that is barely second fiddle to NASCAR.
Think about the possibilities for a moment. Suppose the Alabama Gangsters signed Alabama natives Rick Crawford, Grant Enfinger and Darrell Wallace Jr. Who wouldn’t tune in to Speed to watch the Gangsters take on the Georgia Elliotts of Max Gresham, David Ragan and Chase Elliott?
Of course, each race would be each franchise against every other franchise. But the regional rivalries would still be there. The Gangsters would certainly want to finish ahead of the Elliotts. But new rivalries would also develop.
If the Gangsters and the Ohio Buckeyes were the two best teams, a rivalry similar to the Dallas Cowboys vs. New York Giants would develop.
There could even be a draft, with each franchise selecting up-and-coming short-track drivers
Imagine an ARCA Series with the following 12 franchises:
North Carolina, Alabama, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Georgia, Tennessee, Pennsylvania/New Jersey, New England and Virginia.
Alabama selects Talladega and Montgomery as its home tracks. Georgia selects Atlanta Motor Speedway and Gresham Motorsports Park. Tennessee picks Nashville Superspeedway and Memphis Motorsports Park.
Each franchise would get first crack at signing a driver from its region. So the Gangsters would have an edge at signing Grant Enfinger. But that might not matter.
Nobody in New Orleans cares that Drew Brees is from Texas and went to Purdue University in Indiana. After winning the Super Bowl last year he could be elected mayor of New Orleans.
Maybe, just maybe, it could work that way in motorsports. It’s at least worth a try.
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
Follow Doug on Twitter: @dougdemmons
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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