CoTA, one year later - Interview by Steven Cole Smith

[NickHolt]

Circuit of the Americas, one year later - Exclusive conversation with founding partner Bobby Epstein

 

By Steven Cole Smith, Autoweek

 

December 3, 2013 - When we last left Bobby Epstein, founding partner of the $450 million Circuit of the Americas racetrack near Austin, it was in an interview published online Nov. 14, 2012. And Epstein was worried.

 

“As the founder of Prophet Capital, a money-management group that handles more than $2 billion in investments, Epstein's deals are typically done quietly, among a minimum of participants,” the story said. '“This is different,” he says. “I've never been involved in a venture where we have to sell tickets. Will people buy them? And if they do, will they come? And if they come, will they have a good time? I've never had to worry about that before.'”

 

With more than a full year and two Formula One races come and gone, Epstein is still worried because that's what he does: He worries. He knows people will buy F1 tickets. And they came. And they had a good time. But as for the rest of the year?

 

“We've learned a lot over the last year,” he told Autoweek following the United States Grand Prix held on Nov. 17. "We've had many successes and a few painful failures. The good news is that the education we got, though expensive, will help as we move into 2014 and beyond.”

 

The successes are the F1 and MotoGP races. A vintage festival that drew more than 550 cars was a success, he says, “and we can build on that.”

 

The failures? Harder to categorize. The crowd wasn't bad for the Australian V8 Supercars weekend in May, but the series won't be back in 2014. Packing up all those cars and equipment and air-freighting it to Texas for one weekend made no financial sense to the series' new boss, who says it might be back if V8 Supercars can figure out how to string together two or three race weekends in the U.S.

 

The Sports Car Club of America brought hundreds of cars to the track for a double Majors weekend last March, but it won't be back; apparently it was too expensive. Grand-Am's Rolex Sports Car Series also raced at COTA in March, but it won't be back in 2014 for obvious reasons: The series no longer exists after merging with the American Le Mans Series for next year. The combined series, the Tudor United SportsCar Championship, will race at COTA Sept. 19 and 20, sharing the weekend with the FIA World Endurance Championship, as the ALMS and WEC did this year. The Pirelli World Challenge Series -- it competed at COTA in May -- won't return in 2014. Would Epstein like to fill those dates with more races? Yes, no and maybe.

 

“I'd like a lot of racing events, but at the same time I'd like the stands to be full for those events,” he says. “And one of my concerns is that if you have too many races and you don't have a local core fan base that wants to come out frequently, you are going to dilute the success of every race. So I think what we'll find is fewer major racing events, but that will allow us to focus on those more thoroughly and allow the fans to experience a super event at each one.”

Really, there are only two other series that might fit the bill: IndyCar, currently committed to Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth and a street-circuit in Houston, and NASCAR. It would seem that, say, a NASCAR Nationwide Series race at COTA would be a natural especially if it could be staged on an off-weekend for the Sprint Cup series.

 

A year ago, NASCAR seemed out of the question to Epstein -- not because he wasn't interested, but because he assumed NASCAR wasn't. That's changing.

 

“It's been nice to see, after getting a lot of push-back, and running into some closed doors, to see that I think everybody is receptive to doing something together. It was certainly uncomfortable for NASCAR and other series to embrace us early on, because they had no way of knowing what we would become. So it would be my hope that some of those doors will open for us.”

 

Of course it hasn't hurt that United SportsCar is controlled by NASCAR in general, Grand-Am founder Jim France in particular, and France said at the Grand-Am event at COTA how much he liked the track. “I think they understand their product and customer base, and if they think we are the right fit, they'll be here,” Epstein says. In 2015, maybe? “I don't want to put any dates on it.”

 

So what is filling up the schedule at COTA? More events, but many are nonracing. “What we are striving to be is a multidimensional company between racing and entertainment,” Epstein continues. “And by definition, 'entertainment' is a pretty broad concept. Our campus is made for big entertainment events.”

 

It has hosted 20 concerts this year, and one just now taking shape for 2014 is Redfest USA, hosted and organized by comedian Jeff Foxworthy, and tentatively featuring Larry the Cable Guy, Florida-Georgia Line, Rodney Carrington, Colt Ford, Amber Carrington, Gangstagrass, Big & Rich and more. It's “Red,” as in “Redneck,” Foxworthy says, and it will take at least a full weekend.

 

But the biggest catch for 2014 is ESPN's X Games; they come to COTA in May after beating other finalists Detroit, Chicago and Charlotte, N.C., selected out of 18 cities that applied. Epstein doesn't think COTA and Austin were the highest bidders, but the venue's layout likely sealed the deal.

 

“I think what they saw was the flexibility of the facility. I believe one of [the judges] described it as the most unique sports venue not built around the dimensions of a field.”

 

Is the X Games a moneymaker, though? “You go in thinking you can build a profitable model. Sometimes you get it right, sometimes you get it wrong, so we've certainly gone into the X Games with reasonable expectations,” he says. “They have an existing business model you are partnering with that has been proven successful.”

 

And it will bring younger people to the facility, younger eyes to the broadcasts. “I think this is important in building our future in racing. We've got to find reasons to engage the younger generation for racing to be sustainable. And that's going to start simply by bringing people out to the site and at least letting them come have a look at us. COTA is different than most of the places they see on TV regarding racing.”

 

As for Epstein personally, COTA has been a challenge.

 

“Since we last spoke in November, I greatly underestimated the time this would take,” he admits. “And it keeps going up exponentially. But part of it is creative time, thinking about things we can do. And part is simply the growing pains of building a company.”

 

One very recent major change is the departure of COTA CEO Steve Sexton, who came from the horse-racing industry, replaced by Jason Dial, who came from the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers, thus continuing the COTA tradition of hiring management that has no motorsports experience, something Epstein defends vigorously and at length.

 

“Our staff has to handle big crowds, serve a heck of a lot of food and beer, park cars, deal with permitting and managing the facility,” he points out. “I don't know that having knowledge of a particular sport is as important in delivering the success of the product than it is having knowledge of how to deliver that product. And that's where I think we've received some unfair criticism. I don't think the guy who knows how to make movies -- to direct and produce them -- has the same skill set it takes as the guy who builds and operates the movie theater, to give the moviegoer a great movie experience. If anything, that's where I think that criticism has been unfair.”

 

Epstein also says the criticism regarding tickets to this year's F1 race that were either delivered to buyers late or not at all had to do with an outside vendor, not COTA.

 

And though Autoweek spoke to several annoyed fans who had to pick up their tickets at will-call windows prior to the race, he is convinced the number of people inconvenienced was “far smaller” than the media suggested -- including Autoweek, which, unfairly he said, called the problem a “fiasco” in a headline published on autoweek.com.

 

The WEC roundly criticized COTA. WEC management during its race weekend called a meeting with track executives and criticized them for improperly promoting the race -- a one-off in the United States, for which the WEC itself did very little promotion.

 

“As is sometimes the case,” Epstein says, the WEC may have been looking for someone to blame “for the poor reception their product got here.”

 

Epstein was always a casual racing fan -- he attended the F1 race in Dallas in 1984, when he was just 19 -- but has become especially respectful of F1 drivers and crews.“

 

A 1.9-second pit stop is just mind-boggling to me,” he reveals, and he is a new fan of MotoGP; it made a successful COTA debut in April and is coming back. And, he reminds, don't think COTA is a finished product.

 

“We have great ambitions, big ideas. We have a 1,500-acre canvas here, and we've only painted on 400 of those acres.”