Originally Posted by
a13x
disclaimer: this really isn't any sort of go at you tsorfas, just kind of kicking the ball around and your original comment sparked my curiosity. All in the spirit of disucssion. Cheers
You said "Motor cross and arena cross specifically is the only two wheeled sport Americans enjoy." Okay got it. But it was followed with "And even that is so low in attendance and revenue..."
It was the second part I was asking for clarification on. "low in attendance and revenue". Compared to what? Was a pretty vague statement as is. My point was the attendance numbers for supercross are not low in any metric you want to quantify it with. Anaheim 1 is sold out. There is such a huge turnout for the Atlanta race they added a second one this year, etc etc. Overall SX's average about 45,000 per event over 17 rounds. Those are good numbers by anyone's reckoning. The second part was 'revenue is down' which again I was curious about. There are a great number of quality teams and solid rides, nothing to sneeze at, with top guys making 7 figures.
Switching topics, general musing:
I also don't hold to the opinion that Americans don't like roadracing, meaning American motorcyclist. No, Americans don't like shitty products. American roadracing has been a fucking horrible product for 6 years. Yea the racing has been good but the actual PRODUCT and experience has sucked. I was EMBARRASSED to bring company executives to Daytona, the "BIGGEST RACE OF THE YEAR" (har har har) the last few years. Got to the point it wasn't even fun to be at AMA races. Last exciting AMA race I went to was New Jersey 2009, first year of that track, where there was a pretty good crowd.
However, Indianapolis GP this year was off the hook. There was 62,000 on race day with total attendance around 110,000 over 3 days. Know what the attendance was on race day for Silverstone England this year? England... the bike crazy country. 67,000 on raceday. I've been to Silverstone 2011, Valencia (2011,2012), Catalunya 2013, Laguna Seca (2005-2013), Indianapolis 2011-2014, and Austin 2013 for Grand Prixs. Catalunya was #1 for awesome crowd and Indy 2014 was #2. IndyGP is #1 when it comes to overall vibe with a killer downtown, huge turnout of bikes, and all that jazz.
So yea, Americans like roadracing, IMO, and I think it *can* be rebuilt into a viable product again domestically. Is roadracing ever going to be baseball, football, basketball, hockey? HELL NO. Waste of time even thinking about that. Shit soccer can't even get any play on mainstream TV (other than WC) and the numbers for soccer are huuuuge. There are 9 million registered motorcyclist in the US (out of 300 million) and 400,000 bikes sold per year (btw that number was about 1.2 million before the 2008 crash). We aren't ever going to be mainstream, that's okay, I just want to get us back to where we were in the late 90's!
Topic at hand
Marketing at NHMS. Fact is NHMS isn't going to put much effort into marketing club racing, any club racing. They are overworked and understaffed and they have 2 big races a year that they have to 'kill it' to justify their existence. NASCAR is actually been in a decline over the last few years so all hands on deck to sell those tickets. Club racing cars, bikes, horses, etc is something to keep the utility bills paid between NASCAR races. If you guys want to build fans and exposure with the club it's only going to happen two ways 1) the LRRS club does it or 2) the LRRS racers do it. Grassroots man. Think punk rock band. Target other riders. Forget about 'Joe Public and Soccer Mom USA'. Work on getting all the bike owners you personally know and see out to the races. Walk and talk at every bike night you go to, spread the word. You'd be amazed at how few riders know anything about racing. I remember being at a big bike night in New Jersey in 2009. Tons of guys. I was there with the Jordan team and the riders were inside signing autographs (they signed about 5). Outside was tons of dudes sitting on their bikes telling stories. I walked up to about a dozen guys "hey man cool bike you coming to the race tomorrow" "what race? what?" "uh the race 25 miles away at the new track, AMA Superbike, Michael Jordan team" TOTAL BLANK FACES. Mind you the track had been pumping this race pretty hard cause it was Year 1 and there were TV ads, billboards, all that shit. Dozen guys I talked to, no idea.
I really have yet to meet a person who's come to a race and NOT liked it, it's just getting them there.