jumbo Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 Heres the deal. You took over a track and you've had a slower than expected start. Your car and fan count are down do you Plan A Change your purse. Go to racing 2 nights a month. Not do any promotion work until things get better. Plan B Do something,anything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
landlord Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 Nothing like putting good money after bad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gundogC3 Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 Pray !!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Txenergy Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 Heres the deal. You took over a track and you've had a slower than expected start. Your car and fan count are down do you Plan A Change your purse. Go to racing 2 nights a month. Not do any promotion work until things get better. Plan B Do something,anything. Jumbo I would do plan A, Change my purse, ( UP IT ) .,,,,, and Plan B ,, Have a FREE night for the fans and entry fees for drivers would be FREE for the entry and pits area,, and give aways I would have to make it a win for the drivers ,, win situation. for the fans and get them there. just my opinion.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jracer98 Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 To be fair, they opened with no real changes to the rules, race night, etc AND a raised purse. The car count was "half" right off the bat. Almost every negative decision that followed was a reaction to the decreased net dollars. The most interesting question to me is ,"What happened to the cars?". This little track had the largest number of budget cars driven by younger drivers (many female) that I have ever seen. They weren't there on opening day. Jay Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucky161 Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 Plan A? Plan to fail? Plan B? Might fail? Plan B. My plan B would be to get on the phone to every car owner that I could and invite, beg, coerce them into bringing their cars out. No entry fees beyond insurance costs. Then I would print flyers and distribute them everywhere I could announcing free admission and hope to make a profit on the concessions that would NOT have jacked up prices. Then I would combine all similar classes, based on the perception of the fans, not the competitors or myself. Announce to the fans that admission would be free until at least one class had a reasonable field of cars and then admission would be moderate based on car counts. If say the mod 4s made a decent car count but the street stock 4s didn't, then the mod 4s would be paid a purse, the street stock 4s would still be charged no entry fee, but not paid a purse and fans would be advised that they were strictly an exhibition class until they made a field. I would give hand outs to fans, crews and potential sponsors spelling out what it cost to get a car onto the track on a regular basis and work with car owners and sponsors to get the most bang for their buck. All of course depending on being able to pay for this and invest the time. I would enlist as many people, fans, competitors and sponsors to get on the phones and invite their friends and customers and to put on shows whenever and wherever possible. If no improvement was evident after a reasonable length of time, I would thank everyone for their efforts and mourn the loss. Times are tough. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CommonSenseRacing Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 No entry fees beyond insurance cost, that's easy to say when your not the one who is responsible for paying the bills. Who is going to pay for the rest of the cost associate with operating the track? Jacked up concession stands, are the track concessions a little expensive? Yes. Have you been to the movies or a event at one of the stadiums here in town? They all jack up the concessions, that is the way to make money. I don't agree with it, but if your in business and you give everything away, you won't be in business very long. I personally do not believe tickets should be free, but until the car counts are better, they could have 2 for the price of 1 sales, HMP could allow the drag racers to use their ticket to come back on the oval track nights. There are alternatives, but it also come back to putting on a good show. As a track owner you are competing against a lot of other businesses for the consumers entertainment dollar. Everyone how much competition there is for that $. I'm not knocking your suggestions, I agree with the last part about enlisting people for help. I give HMP a lot of credit for keeping the oval track open and I disagree with 90% of their policies and the way they operate the track. They have successfully implemented the drag strip and I'm pretty sure if they eliminated the oval track nights and opened the drag strip every week they would make more money. The oval track is not profitable and operating a race track is a business, as a business person I want to make a profit, why would I spend money and time on a business that will continue to loose money? JMO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucky161 Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 Plan A? Plan to fail? Plan B? Might fail? Plan B. My plan B would be to get on the phone to every car owner that I could and invite, beg, coerce them into bringing their cars out. No entry fees beyond insurance costs. Then I would print flyers and distribute them everywhere I could announcing free admission and hope to make a profit on the concessions that would NOT have jacked up prices. Then I would combine all similar classes, based on the perception of the fans, not the competitors or myself. Announce to the fans that admission would be free until at least one class had a reasonable field of cars and then admission would be moderate based on car counts. If say the mod 4s made a decent car count but the street stock 4s didn't, then the mod 4s would be paid a purse, the street stock 4s would still be charged no entry fee, but not paid a purse and fans would be advised that they were strictly an exhibition class until they made a field. I would give hand outs to fans, crews and potential sponsors spelling out what it cost to get a car onto the track on a regular basis and work with car owners and sponsors to get the most bang for their buck. All of course depending on being able to pay for this and invest the time. I would enlist as many people, fans, competitors and sponsors to get on the phones and invite their friends and customers and to put on shows whenever and wherever possible. If no improvement was evident after a reasonable length of time, I would thank everyone for their efforts and mourn the loss. Times are tough. No entry fees beyond insurance cost, that’s easy to say when your not the one who is responsible for paying the bills. Who is going to pay for the rest of the cost associate with operating the track? You might have missed this part, "All of course depending on being able to pay for this and invest the time." Jacked up concession stands, are the track concessions a little expensive? Yes. Have you been to the movies or a event at one of the stadiums here in town? They all jack up the concessions, that is the way to make money. I don’t agree with it, but if your in business and you give everything away, you won‘t be in business very long. Yes, I've been to those places and they are big ripoffs. Big enough for me to avoid them as much as possible. Perhaps I should have been more explicit. I didn't mean they couldn't make a profit, in fact that is the only place in my plan B that would even allow for a profit. I personally do not believe tickets should be free, but until the car counts are better, they could have 2 for the price of 1 sales, HMP could allow the drag racers to use their ticket to come back on the oval track nights. There are alternatives, but it also come back to putting on a good show. As a track owner you are competing against a lot of other businesses for the consumers entertainment dollar. Everyone how much competition there is for that $. 2 for one might work. The track was not named, but I suspect that HMP was not the track being talked about. My guess it's the track that just closed. My suggestions were based on my belief that the track in question was on it's last legs. You are correct that there is a lot of competition for those dollars and if your show is suffering then free tickets might still not be cheap enough. I’m not knocking your suggestions, I agree with the last part about enlisting people for help. I give HMP a lot of credit for keeping the oval track open and I disagree with 90% of their policies and the way they operate the track. They have successfully implemented the drag strip and I’m pretty sure if they eliminated the oval track nights and opened the drag strip every week they would make more money. The oval track is not profitable and operating a race track is a business, as a business person I want to make a profit, why would I spend money and time on a business that will continue to loose money? I don't know enough about HMP to comment on whether they are making money or not and it's not really any of my business. I am sure that most people operating race tracks are doing so as a business and want to turn a profit. However, that is not always the case both by design and by happenstance. JMO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
REBELRACER Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 They have successfully implemented the drag strip and I’m pretty sure if they eliminated the oval track nights and opened the drag strip every week they would make more money or dig up the asphalt and make it a banked dirt track........seems that dirt has the most cars and fans now days...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CommonSenseRacing Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 00 You might have missed this part, "All of course depending on being able to pay for this and invest the time." I didn't miss that part, if the track in question is on it's last leg how would a owner be able to fund this type of investment? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lucky161 Posted June 22, 2007 Report Share Posted June 22, 2007 00 You might have missed this part, "All of course depending on being able to pay for this and invest the time." I didn't miss that part, if the track in question is on it's last leg how would a owner be able to fund this type of investment? Probably with great difficulty, however I don't know the owner or his/her circumstances. It's not that I don't think you are right, but your suggestions make more sense to me for a track that is not yet in dire straits or is actually stable and just wants to increase business. They have successfully implemented the drag strip and I’m pretty sure if they eliminated the oval track nights and opened the drag strip every week they would make more money or dig up the asphalt and make it a banked dirt track........seems that dirt has the most cars and fans now days...... You may be right, but I sincerely hope you are not. I think there may already be a dirt track in that town, ,but perhaps not. What I would hate about a senario like that is here in North Texas, we can choose from 10 dirt tracks within an hour and a half driving distance, 3 within 30 minutes of my house. Wichita Falls was the closest short paved track and it was 2 hours away. Kyle is 3.5 hours. Not within my budget for weekly racing. And that doesn't even take into account that we can't see ASA, Hooter's Cup, Supermodifieds and some other good racing in this area. I love dirt racing too, but would love to have both. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marc200mph Posted June 22, 2007 Report Share Posted June 22, 2007 Easy reb, you might start an argument on here! LOL It's not A or B plan, it was, there was never a business plan to start with! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jumbo Posted June 22, 2007 Author Report Share Posted June 22, 2007 DING! DING! DING! give that man a prize. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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