How many people
know what we do?

5/7/03

have to give credit where credit is due and this month the idea for a column comes from wife, Barb. We were talking about subjects for a column and she came up with the question, "Why don't the people we know in our little town ever come out and watch us race?" Cedar Falls Raceway is only three miles from our little town and I have seen maybe six or eight people from here out at the races in the last 15 years. When I go to a meeting at my employer's regional office, in West Des Moines, IA, I may mention I was racing last weekend and they always ask, "Where can you drag race in Iowa?" There are five drag strips in Iowa and two of them host IHRA Pro-Am events and another hosts a huge NHRA Lucas Oil Series event. How can it be these people, who deal with cars and body shops every day, don't even know there is drag racing in Iowa, let alone within 50 miles of West Des Moines? It always amazes me to hear this.

Are we THAT BORING or is it the event itself that is THAT BORING? I started to ask myself some questions and I hope you will do the same thing. I have been thinking about WHY nobody seems to know about our sport. In most cases the cars are sharp looking, well detailed, and the pit area on a Saturday night or Sunday afternoon at a local track offers a wide variety of vehicles to look at. Besides the "car show" appearance to the pit area, there is usually a lot of action taking place to keep people interested.

On the track you can usually see everything from a street-legal Honda Civic running 16 seconds to a rear engine dragster running mid-seven seconds at 170 mph. The cars are interesting enough, in my opinion, so the reason the bleachers are empty must be that the event itself is just TOO BORING. How can a local promoter start to overcome that problem? I wish I had the answers.

I owned the local drag strip for over 10 years and never really could get a handle on the best way to keep people at the track once you exposed them to our sport. In some cases the track managers have found it easier to have nothing but street drags, test and tunes and things like concerts to keep the gates open and the track profitable. That scares me because I have a lot of time and money invested in my bracket racing equipment and I enjoy racing and want to see it continue for years to come.

I do have some ideas, and if you have an opinion or an idea let me know or better yet, let your local track operator know what you think might work. I have listed a few ideas I have both tried and thought about trying. See what you think.

1. Free Admission: I have always thought if you let people in for FREE they at least might show up. Then the real work begins, how to keep them entertained and get them to return.
2. Car-Load Prices: If you can't get a track to try free admission, why not $5.00 for a car-load of spectators? We tried this and we had good spectator turnouts time and time again. I just couldn't get them to come back when we charged regular prices. If you own a company with retail traffic, why not ask the track for a bunch of free tickets for your customers and in return you will mention in your advertising that customers can pick up free tickets for the races next week at your store locations, etc, etc.
3. Bring-A-Friend to the track promotions: We tried a deal where a racer or a race fan could bring a newcomer (friend) to the track for free. We thought if they came in for free with somebody that understood the basics of bracket racing they might be more inclined to come back on their own. It was a "trust program" in a sense because we didn't want regular crewmembers or family to get in free, as that would hurt the income for the track and not help it. It backfired and we got more complaints because some people got in free while our "regulars" had to pay the pit pass fee.
4. Regular admission prices but when you come in as a spectator you get $5.00 worth of FREE FOOD or DRINK at the concession stand. Another idea we hoped would turn first timers into regular customers. Didn't work consistently.

Like most track owners, we tried a multitude of different promotions, advertising, and ticket giveaways. We would have thousands of people one time and only fifty the next time. I guess that is the reason I finally gave up and sold the track. Now that I stand back and don't have that overhead to deal with I think I see what I did wrong. Got to love that 20/20 hindsight, right?