May3

May 3, 2004

Time to Share the Wealth
By Allison Wagda

If you listen to many NASCAR fans, the sport’s heyday
has been left in the dust as the sport migrates from its
Southern roots onto the national stage.

Make no mistake, the driving force behind this
expansion is money. The National Association for Stock
Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) is a private, for-profit
company. It’s run by the France family, also the primary
shareholders of International Speedway Corporation (ISC), a public company tasked
with producing revenue for its investors.

So NASCAR is an evil conglomerate only looking to line its own pockets. There, I’ve
said it. Let’s move on.

Nowadays, fans can be found in even the most remote corners of the U.S. Two years
ago while vacationing on Kodiak Island in Alaska, I met several locals who were also
NASCAR fans. Even in this small fishing hamlet in the Gulf of Alaska, people devoted
early-morning Sundays to the sport.

And it’s not only the fans that hail from outside Southern borders these days. Some
of NASCAR’s top stars likely never heard of Mooresville, North Carolina prior to their
involvement with racing. Jeff Gordon and Kevin Harvick are from California. Last year’
s Cup champ, Matt Kenseth, is from Wisconsin. Kurt Busch and Brendan Gaughan
are Vegas natives. Greg Biffle’s hometown is Vancouver, Wash. Ryan Newman,
Indiana. The list goes on.

Over the past decade, NASCAR has flirted with tracks outside the South. Last August,
the organization made a highly controversial call and restructured the 2004
schedule, moving the historic Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway from its
traditional Labor Day weekend to a chilly November Sunday and adding a new date
at California Speedway outside of LA. It was the opening salvo in what portends to be
a battle over coveted race dates. Just a month later, Bill France Jr. stepped aside and
handed the reigns of the kingdom over to his son Brian, a person everyone expects
to continue the expansion race.

Change is clearly inevitable. Tracks outside the South are clamoring for races as it
becomes more and more obvious that they can easily fill the stands. It’s a
conundrum for fans like me. We don’t want to see the history of the sport
downplayed, but we would also love to see our favorite racers at tracks a little closer
to home. We stay quiet while fans in the South rage at NASCAR’s proposed
changes. We see empty seats on TV at tracks like Rockingham and Darlington, but
sit in seven hours of traffic to drive five miles just to see 100 yards of a road course
race.

Perhaps fans in the South have taken NASCAR for granted. I’m not questioning their
devotion to the sport in any way. I’m a big San Francisco Giants fan, but I only make it
to the ballpark maybe two or three times a year. It’s so close, I know it’s always there
if I want to go. But if the Giants couldn’t fill the stadium on a regular basis, I wouldn’t
blame them for taking their toys and going elsewhere.

That being said, NASCAR is going about making changes the wrong way. Rather
than take the quick, easy money, they should be looking at what’s best for the sport
over the long haul. With race dates in such high demand, only tracks with a unique
reason should command two per season. Daytona, Talladega, Bristol,
Richmond…these tracks host races that spur fans to great lengths to see. But
Fontana? Texas?

Fontana might be a nice track, but it is a snoozer for fans. It might be in a top media
market, but, again, it is a snoozer for fans. It’s also no coincidence that ISC owns the
track.

The quality of the race on TV should be as important, if not more so, than the
attendance at the track. Sure, NASCAR should hit up LA once a year. Just like it gives
the nod to San Francisco fans by racing at Infineon. Several other regions like New
York City and the Pacific Northwest are definitely due for a race and shouldn’t suffer
in silence while NASCAR caves to Texas to avoid having fans see just how much
money they really are making off of us.

And Darlington and Rockingham certainly deserve to retain at least one race per year.

If planned correctly, there are plenty of race dates to go around. But if NASCAR
continues to stack the schedule with boring races at cookie-cutter tracks, they’ll soon
understand exactly where the money they crave comes from when it begins to dry
up…the fans.

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