if the claim is that there is no pot of gold to divide, making twk's view incorrect, then how on earth does the argument that grand-am has a viable business model hold water? it is a series which has consistently failed to generate major excitement. the claims that it is practical ignore the fact that something which is supposedly the entertainment business (which is what racing is), must be entertaining. and the reality is that sports car fans need more than close racing to be entertained. grand-am only accomplishes close racing, but fails to excite through interesting/compelling cars. sports car racing isn't nascar, and the daytona prototype class and gt class don't cut it for sports car racing. the daytona prototypes are inexcusably ugly and fail to generate the excitement necessary. the GT class consists of a bunch of castrated porsches, a couple of tube frame mazdas and a few tube frame pontiac g6's. wow, that's a really awesome collection of cars there. just what i, as a sports car racing fan, want to see.

the argument that the formula is practical doesn't hold water because there are other tehnical formats in sports car racing which cost roughly the same to run, and which are able to get considerably more gearhead appeal. and that is a part of sports car racing. it's a niche market, and the niche involves an actually affection for cars.

any sports car racing formula which does not accomodate that is going to be less than successful, and grand-am has been that. corporate arguments nothwithstanding, the reality is that grand-am is not any sort of future that the fans want. and if someone actually has a business model that's worth following, the paying customers (aka the fans) are the people who need to be taken into account...

Right. The idea is that however much money racing can earn, it needs to be distributed in such a way that the teams can afford to race, and the tracks can afford to host races.

marshallbanana - 27 June 2009 07:58 PM

just what i, as a sports car racing fan, want to see.

the argument that the formula is practical doesn't hold water because there are other tehnical formats in sports car racing which cost roughly the same to run, and which are able to get considerably more gearhead appeal. and that is a part of sports car racing. it's a niche market, and the niche involves an actually affection for cars.

any sports car racing formula which does not accomodate that is going to be less than successful, and grand-am has been that. corporate arguments nothwithstanding, the reality is that grand-am is not any sort of future that the fans want. and if someone actually has a business model that's worth following, the paying customers (aka the fans) are the people who need to be taken into account...

If YOU were running sportscar racing, you would find that getting everything YOU want would require:

1. Getting car companies to buy into it.
2. Getting promoters to buy into it.
3. Getting fans to buy into it.
4. Getting TV companies to ACCEPT a small national viewing market.

Your love for exotic sportsars does not speak for every sportsar fan in the US. Your "I love it, so every sportscar should love it." does not speak to this current situation at all. If it did, then there would be no rumors of the ALMS' demise.

This is a tough nut, and Grand Am made some tough calls, but they did not make them in a vacuum. The guys who made decisions there were actually sportscar guys who did not wish to make the same mistakes twice. Everything that Grand Am did, they did without regard to popularity, but with an eye to survive in a world that looks at sportscar racing as an afterthought.

A decade later, 15 or so DP's are racing at every event, and 32 cars on average are racing. The schedule is solid and consistant. Top drivers and names like Penske, Ganassi and The Racers Group are competing and the series continues to grow.

They do not have you as a supporter, but if you think that that was their intent from the begining, then you have not been paying attention. I suspect that over the last decade, Grand Am has cultivated more NEW sportscar racing fans than the ALMS due to the closeness of competition and the consistancy of product.

The plan that was put in place was a plan to not LOSE money, to build on the previous year's gains and to present less of a gamble to perspective teams, advertisers and fans. Its working. If you see it or not, its working.

I thought about posting a response to Tom's post at his Murphy site, but I decided not to. Since I'm here, I'll post my concerns and why I don't think it'll work.

He says the league should be a creature of the teams. Okay. The problem is not all teams are equal. The examples he uses, the teams are mostly equal enough. Yes, the Pirates aren't the Yankees but if we magically took away the Yankees, MLB could continue on at about 95% of the level it was before. The Corvette team draws more fans to the track than Intersport by a Grand Canyon-size margin, but Intersport would have the same weight on rules and league direction. So it's not as much the MLB of an organization amongst 30 relative equals, but 4 major league teams, a couple Triple-A teams, with Double-A and Single-A teams making up the balance.

And as we see with the ACO in Europe, they change rules on a whim on the basis of one manufacturer. Tommy Kendall was once on Wind Tunnel and was asked why the Trans-Am series died in light of people wanting road racing with "production-based cars". One reason he stated was that the manufacturers would always say "give us this rules break or we're leaving". Imagine if the ALMS was ran this way currently. The 3 Acura teams would all have votes on the board, while teams such as Audi and Peugeot would not because they don't run the full schedule. Acura would like to win the last two races against Audi and Peugeot where they could potentially show up: Petit and Laguna Seca. So Acura presents the board, filled with the likes of Intersport and Flying Lizard and the Primetime team, "add this restriction for diesels for the rest of the season or we're pulling out of the series". So the other full-time entrants, most of which couldn't draw if by themselves, are presented with the predicament of losing the main draw outside of Corvette unless they acquiesce to this demand. And chances are they would do it. And in doing so, Audi and Peugeot would probably choose not to run at the Petit or Laguna Seca, and we get worse racing as a result. You could see if the series were GT-dominated as far as entrants, the GT teams would look out for their own interests by making prototypes heavily restricted so as to enhance their victory prospects and give them more exposure so they could get sponsors and TV time.

The people that run the series have to have a power structure independent of the teams. I have zero desire to see a repeat of the assheadedness of CART politics.

comanche - 28 June 2009 10:15 AM

If YOU were running sportscar racing, you would find that getting everything YOU want would require:

1. Getting car companies to buy into it.
2. Getting promoters to buy into it.
3. Getting fans to buy into it.
4. Getting TV companies to ACCEPT a small national viewing market.

Your love for exotic sportsars does not speak for every sportsar fan in the US. Your "I love it, so every sportscar should love it." does not speak to this current situation at all. If it did, then there would be no rumors of the ALMS' demise.

are GT's exotic sports cars? they cost the same as a daytona prototype to run, or even less if you mean a GT3-level car. i'm not saying "i love it so you must love it", i'm saying that the argument that "the ALMS is in difficulty so Grand-Am must be the best way, and is the only way" is factually incorrect.

This is a tough nut, and Grand Am made some tough calls, but they did not make them in a vacuum. The guys who made decisions there were actually sportscar guys who did not wish to make the same mistakes twice. Everything that Grand Am did, they did without regard to popularity, but with an eye to survive in a world that looks at sportscar racing as an afterthought.

every decision? if that was the case, then why solutions which made their audience smaller and made it more difficult to get interest? the daytona prototypes are as ugly as they are because that helps them to survive? the GT class features nutered porsches and everyone else has to be tube frame only because that makes it better able to survive?

A decade later, 15 or so DP's are racing at every event, and 32 cars on average are racing. The schedule is solid and consistant. Top drivers and names like Penske, Ganassi and The Racers Group are competing and the series continues to grow.

grow? car counts haven't grown, and if car counts are the measure of a series success, then other north american sports car series which get much more than 15 top class cars are evidently much better.

They do not have you as a supporter, but if you think that that was their intent from the begining, then you have not been paying attention. I suspect that over the last decade, Grand Am has cultivated more NEW sportscar racing fans than the ALMS due to the closeness of competition and the consistancy of product.

based on what evidence? grand-am crowds are a lot smaller than ALMS crowds at the majority of events (i can't really think of any grand-am events known for outdrawing an ALMS race), and if the product is consistent, but poor, it's not going to work.

The plan that was put in place was a plan to not LOSE money, to build on the previous year's gains and to present less of a gamble to perspective teams, advertisers and fans. Its working. If you see it or not, its working.

based on what? if it's working, then why didn't the fans flock to it? the reality is that sports car racing is about more than just close racing. cars do matter. and daytona prototypes, and pontiac g6's are not exactly going to cut it in the gearhead appeal department. the failure of grand-am to significantly grow an audience and gain significant media attention (putting out a mass of press releases is not a substitute for other people not caring) is a rather clear indicator that grand-am is clearly not working very well either.

you can claim the ALMS is a failure because it's dependent on manufacturer participation, but you can't claim grand-am is therefore a success because it hasn't got that...

@StateBoiler:

You outline a lot of what would need to be addressed. These are not barriers, but difficulties. The rules would have to be shaped to prevent stupid squabbles.

Difficult? Sure. Impossible? I don't know, but that means, "I don't know," not "Let's give up."

Copying NBA or NFL models will not work because there are different factors in racing. But as I see it, the article points out that the current business model for sports car racing (and has anyone noticed F1 and IRL are having troubles? And who knows what is up for NASCAR) has not been working, and different ideas need to be considered.

@ the thread in general: Everybody knows that racing is a niche sport, and sports car racing a smaller niche. That's a given. Everybody realizes (I hope) that a lot of the appeal of sports car racing is the carts (if you doubt it read the boards here and a lot of other places.)

So ... seems to me we need a way to have cars that are better than the prototurtles (more variety, more development) without going the F1 route of skyrocketing costs.

Seems to me to be quite a challenge. But I don't suppose getting to the Moon was easy. Just needs some intelligent businessmen teaming up with some intelligent engineers and working things out.

But until new ideas are tried, we keep trying the same old, which keeps failing. The article suggests that we stop repeating failure and try to learn from models that have been proven successful. Sounds smart to me.

By the way: I watch GA, and will attend races if they are within driving distance and I can work out the RL details (work, cash, other obligations.) But I also recognize the limitations of the series. The cars are ugly and almost identical, and the racing is not always all that. Seems to me that Ganassi or Stallings are the top of the field all the time, and sometimes they run away with the race, just like in any other series.

Also, it bothers me that the equivalency formulas change with every race. Would the Porsches have swept the series? Maybe, but did they deserve to? Hard to say. They were hamstrung (in both GT and DP) after the first race, and were played with for the next few races, until now they can almost compete.

It can be hard to attract fans when they know their favorites teams might be legislated out of competition.

Further, with a limited base of sports car fans in the country, splitting the fan base is going to affect commerce. (Happily, I doubt there is a huge amount of overlap, as most hard-core ALMS fans can't stand GA, and I am not sure GA fans have heard of ALMS.)

So it is hard to call GA "successful" if it is missing half the available fan base. Moderately successful, sure. Entertaining, sure. But more successful than ALMS? Maybe this year, but the economic downturn hit ALMS really hard.

Is the economy the source of ALMS's woes? Not at all; it merely highlighted them.

But that is what the article was about: ALMS's woes are a result of a bad business model that doesn't make racing rewarding for the teams.

Independent of what Grand Am does, ALMS needs to find a better formula. And becoming Grand Am (because ALMS fans are not, by and large, Grand Am fans) isn't it.

Why this degraded into a GA vs ALMS thread is beyond me. Nowhere in my post did I say anything about Grand Am. Grand Am, ALMS, IRL, NASCAR, NHRA, SCCA Pro and the various other lower level series are all run by an organization that sets the rules and the teams pay to play.

The fact is that all of them depend on the teams finding the funding to run races. Only NASCAR has enough independent revenue source streams (TV and other intellectual property rights) to justify any discussion of redistributing the revenue streams in a more equal or fair way for all.

Motorsports is different from stick and ball sports and the franchise models used in stick and ball sports IMO cannot work in motorsports. It doesn't matter what product you put on the race track, it's immaterial to this discussion until you make that product so successful that you now have something to discuss. Only NASCAR has managed to reach that level in the US.

If you want to make the argument that starting over is the solution to better viability of the sport in the long run, consider the MLS, which has lost well over $350M since 1996 and after 12 years of existence, only 3 teams have shown any profits. While the MLS hopes to get all teams profitable within the next couple years, you can see from their example that franchising is not the automatic answer and not a guarantee of viability for all participants. Some teams changed names, cities, or just went away, just like in motorsports as some teams come and go depending on funding/revenue.

If MLS can get all teams profitable in the next few years, they will be way ahead of ALMS, where absolutely no team, nor the series itself, is profitable. In fact, the whole show is about bankrupt.

MLS expects to turn a series-wide profit in fifteen years? ALMS expects to go under in eleven.

If you don't think a business model that leads to bankruptcy needs to change ... have a good time doing business.

I dunno...turning a profit sounds kinda evil. Isn't it better to be good and stupid?

Maelochs - 28 June 2009 01:44 PM

@StateBoiler:

You outline a lot of what would need to be addressed. These are not barriers, but difficulties. The rules would have to be shaped to prevent stupid squabbles.

Difficult? Sure. Impossible? I don't know, but that means, "I don't know," not "Let's give up."

You can no more shape the rules to prevent these stupid squabbles here as you can in the FIA, because the stakeholders in the rules as far as using them would be the same people that control them, so it's not as if you legislate that away unless you have a power structure independent of the teams. An example of this would be the triumvirates that used to control Rome. It might work for a little while but at some point one of the three leaders would use his advantages, whether politically or militarily, to seek to overwhelm the other two. Human beings are inherently flawed creatures. You have to accept that they will act in flawed ways. Especially in a sport such as auto racing, where most of your powerbrokers have a very Machiavellian nature to them.