Economy means getting creative
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- All 160,000 seats at Bristol Motor Speedway have been sold for Saturday night's Sprint Cup race. That's a good thing in tough economic times in which there have been attendance drops at 16 of the first 23 events, ranging from a decrease of 2,000 at Watkins Glen to 60,000 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
According to track estimates, 246,800 fewer people have attended Cup races in 2009. That's a decrease of 8.7 percent from a year ago, even with the lower ticket prices that most tracks have offered.
The percentage is likely even higher. Track attendance estimates, just like the estimates at college football games and other sport venues, typically are exaggerated.
Trust me, I've heard enough sports information directors glance into the stands and go, "Hmm, looks like 85,000 to me," to know how it works.
And trust me, NASCAR is not alone in lagging attendance. Major League Baseball was down 5.5 percent in July. It's a safe bet the National Football League, easily the most-watched sport in the country on television, will be down as well.
NASCAR isn't surprised by the numbers. In February, chief marketing officer Steve Phelps predicted a single-digit decline in attendance.
"On the business side, it's a hunker-down year out of necessity," he said.
There's been a lot of hunkering down, particularly from folks who had forgotten the meaning of the word. We're talking about Bristol here. The track entered the season with 53 consecutive sellouts. It had gone 13 years without having to advertise tickets and hadn't had an unsold seat since 1982.
All of a sudden it found itself in the same boat as Darlington and Dover, having to beat the bushes for potential customers. OK, the track did have a few advantages. The races are considered a must-see for fans, like going to a football game at Lambeau Field or a baseball game at Wrigley Field.
The biggest obstacle track president Jeff Byrd and company had was letting fans know tickets were available, because for years it was assumed there weren't any.
So Byrd started doing what other track presidents have been doing for years, what made some in the early days almost as much of a celebrity as the drivers.
He began to promote.
"It's been a very productive exercise for us," Byrd said. "It kind of shook us out of the doldrums and made us pay attention and re-examine everything we're doing to see if our business model was still valid in these changed economic times.
"Everybody was invigorated by the process."
Wake-up call
Bristol and Richmond International Raceway, which saw its 33-race sellout streak end last September, seemed bulletproof to the economy. They had long waiting lists for tickets.
"We never even considered not having a sellout," Byrd said.
Bristol's vulnerability in particular was a wake-up call for the industry. Track presidents across the country realized they had to dig deeper than ever to find ways to get the attention of fans who are becoming more frugal than ever with disposable income.
"There's no question we're back on the street knocking on doors and cold calling," Daytona International Speedway president Robin Braig said.
Selling out the Daytona 500 and putting more than 130,000 fans in seats for the July race used to be a given. This year's 500 was listed 10,000 below a sellout [190,000] and there were barely 100,000 fans at the July race with the entire back straightaway that seats 68,000 shut down.
And this after cutting $99 tickets to $55, a trend that will continue next year.
Last week Braig invited 12 fans -- four that renewed for next season, four that said they may renew and four that said they would not -- that attended the July race to suite 701 to "tell us what we're doing wrong."
"We're back to the very beginning of trying to make sure that we're marketing for every ticket," he said.
Some tracks are taking extreme measures. Lowe's Motor Speedway, which hosts two Cup events and the All-Star race, recently brought 22,000 horsepower to downtown Charlotte for a "Parade of Power" to promote the September NHRA race and the October Cup race.
Drivers from each series came to answer questions from fans and Doug Herbert fired up a Top Fuel dragster that shook the sidewalks on Tryon Street.
"What you'll see this track and other tracks continue to strive to do is something that is going to be loud and proud and make people stand up and take notice," said Scott Cooper, the vice president of communications at LMS.
Not all messages are as loud as Cooper's. Auto Club Speedway in California started a $35 Ticket Tuesday Zucchini Patch promotion in which fans that purchase $35 tickets in July and August will receive California-grown zucchini and Krispy Kreme cheesecake-filled doughnuts.
Michigan International Speedway recently painted the 1983 school bus in which Maurice "Mo" Clark and his wife, who are from nearby Saginaw, have spent the past six years watching every race. They also made a birthday cake and presented it to a fan in the infield and have plans to put in new wider seats that will shrink capacity from 129,000 to 119,500.
"It's silly stuff," MIS president Roger Curtis said. "If you really enjoy your relationship with these people you do the pricing because it helps them out. But you do the other things because that's going to make them come back."
Many tracks are downsizing. Several have taken out sections of stands and put in luxury motorcoach lots to get more bang for the buck.
Most predict future tracks will be downsized, just as the NFL and NBA have gone to smaller arenas to create more demand.
But dropping prices appears to be the best way to have the most immediate impact. MIS already has cut every ticket for next year's two races from 5 to 63 percent, even for those that already were renewed. Many other tracks, from Las Vegas to Darlington, also have announced cuts for next season.
"For years and years we were tacking five dollars onto a ticket and being able to sell those tickets," Braig said. "Selling those $99 for $55 for the Daytona 500, that was huge and that was painful."
But it was necessary, even though it could impact the purse and capital improvements in the coming years. If each of the 246,800 tickets not sold this year was sold for $20, it would be a $4.93 million gain in revenue.
And most of those tickets were priced well above $20.
International Speedway Corporation and Speedway Motorsports Inc., which own 19 of the 21 tracks that host Cup events, can't like that. ISC reported a $31.7 million loss for its fiscal second quarter. Advance ticket sales for its tracks reportedly are down 20 to 30 percent from a year ago. Total admission revenues are expected to be down 15 percent.
SMI reported second quarter losses at $23.4 million. Total revenue in the company has fallen to $191.9 million from $212.8 million at the same time last year.
The losses aren't expected to end next year, as LMS already has learned it will lose the estimated $3.5 million it received from Lowe's for naming rights.
But company officials remain optimistic things will turn around, looking at what is considered a negative in reduced attendance as an opportunity for new fans.
"It's something that is happening across all sports," said ISC spokesman Lenny Santiago. "I'm a [New York] Giants fan. I've been on a waiting list for 15 years now. I got an e-mail recently announcing I could buy individual tickets for each game.
"This is something we're facing as an industry … and I think we'll come out OK."
Sold out!
The Bristol Motor Speedway Facebook page posted this message last week: "Scratch my previous post and thanks Bristol fans! The Sharpie 500 here at Bristol is now sold out."
Not only has Bristol begun taking out ads, it is posting on Facebook. Yes, times have changed.
"I have been very proud of what all the tracks have done," Phelps said. "I know Brian [NASCAR chairman Brian France] has said in that past they weren't working as hard as they probably should have. They're all promoting the heck out of it again."
Drivers are doing what they can to help, too. It matters to them when there are gaping holes in the stands.
"The fans are what make this sport work," said Carl Edwards, this weekend's defending race champion. "That's the bottom line. We're all sitting here because the fans really enjoy it."
With sponsors and advertisers pulling back, drivers realize the sport needs its fans more than ever. Many take time to thank them after a win.
"It's just like Monday in Watkins Glen, you know there was a lot of those people that were probably scheduled to work and chose to stay and watch the NASCAR race," points leader Tony Stewart said. "We're appreciative of those people."
So is NASCAR. It is doing its part through research, advertising and town hall meetings with drivers and team owners to give fans more for their value. Double-file restarts that were implemented in June were the direct result of an outcry from fans.
Officials are doing their best to talk up the quality of racing even when the sport's most popular driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr., criticizes it as he did last weekend. NASCAR officials say they believe the racing is better than it's been in a long time.
They also say they believe that coupled with tracks lowering prices and making the experience a good one -- from asking hotels to lower prices to reducing concession costs -- attendance will take care of itself.
"We want to see sellouts all the time," Phelps said. "More people at the tracks leads to better ratings, better licensing products. It's the most important thing we have.
"As great as the television product is, being there live is different. It's difficult to see speed on television. And the noise and smell and all of it is something that our research has shown drives repeated interest. People need their fix."
And NASCAR, like all sports, needs their people in the stands like they'll be this weekend at Bristol.
David Newton covers NASCAR for ESPN.com. He can be reached at dnewtonespn@aol.com.
