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Originally Posted by secondcurve
Can someone answer a simple question for me, a non-NASCAR person? How can the new owner ever make money on this endeavor after paying $340,000,000 to buy the track? There are only two dates a year at the track and it seats 92,000 people. I know there are sponsorships and so forth, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Does anything else go on at the track the other 363 days a year? How much do they charge the average guy to see a race?
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Good question Second Curve I will attempt to answer with what I know. First and formost you have the tickets sales. And although not as expensive as the cup race you have to remember there is a admitance fee every day for qualifying and the other races. The cup race ticket are from 80 to 110 dollars for the grandstand, not know where the actual average price is across the venue I would guess ticket sales are between 7 to 9 million dollars. Then you have the luxary boxes, unfortunatly I have no idea what one of those goes for or how many of them there are. From there everyone that brings a tailer or motorcoach for the weekend pays a fee... once again I am not sure how much the pay... but there are a lot of motorcoachs and trailers there. Then you have all the vendor's that buy space. And I would imagine those cost a little coin. Then add in all the sponsor ship money etc. there is a lot of money coming into the track on a Cup weekend. So there are multiple sources of income on race weekend. Not that they add up to 340,000,000 in the short term....But SMI is not worried about the short term. And yes There are other events held at NHIS.... Motorcycle races, vintage car and scca races etc. None of these probably generate much revenue, except the motorcycle races, but they keep activity going on.
The issue becomes that SMI is a bussiness and they will do what is in the best interest of the business, and if and when these NHIS dates can be moved to other tracks where they can make more money on Race weekends they will..... As I was looking at some things today, I got reminded of the fate of yet another track.... Rockingham..... the Rock, another track deep in the traditions of NASCAR no longer has a CUP race.... And who is responsible for this why SMI of course....
It is unfortunate that Nascar seems to have a two entity monopoly going on for "Winston Cup" (sorry I am a long time fan and it will always be the Winston cup to me) events..... SMI and ISC own just about all of the tracks now....and right now I am having trouble fiquring out which ones aren't owned by one of the two..... And they are going to move races as they see fit to make the most money....
Alright I will get off my soap box, about how angry I am over this.... Hopefully I will be wrong and NHIS will only lose one race... but I have my doubts.....