Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

, I, . ' Mike Oood.,-n: Speaking 0 , . By Gary Van Voorhis 36 The call came on Tuesday. Mike Goodwin, promoter ofthe Atlanta, Los Angeles and Anaheim Supercross events and the man responsible for putting motocross into the stadium sett ing, wanted to rap . He had read the article on motocross promoter Bill West and wanted to sit down and talk about his own problems with the AMA. Goodwin had outlined his problems in an 11 pag e document addressed to the individual members of the AMA board of trustees and presented to each member prior to the February 10·11 meeting of the board in Cincinnatti. In short, the document detailed instances of conflict between Goodwin and the AMA regarding promotion of events and solicit ation of sponsors. Doug Mockett, AMA Commissioner or Professional Racing, was repeatedly singled out in the document . Numerous correspondence between the parties involved was also included. Suite /001 of Atlanta 's Stadium Hotel is Goodwin 's base of operations until his March 4 event is history. It is from here that Goodwin commands, con trols and manipulates all the forces he needs to insure what he hopes will be anot her successful edition of the Atlanta Superbouil South Supercross. "I don't like to air so-called dirty laundry," com · mented Goodwin while reaching into a refrigerator stocked with products of series' sponsor Mr. PiBB. "But sometimes you have to in order to get some results . Unfortunately, in the process, both parties e nd to come out looking bad. " t It is 9 a. m . yet Goodwin has already been up for almost five hours . For most, the day is just beginning while Goodwin is already rolling in top gear . Aggressive, abrasive, egotistical, dominating, commanding, relentless, driven , assertive and self assured are am ong the many things Goodwin has been labelled. They are all descriptive of his character since he admits that to succeed as well as he has - and he is very successful - you have to step on a few toes an d make afew enemies. . It is not in Goodwin's character to be humble when he can be the center of attention. It is also not in his character to be quiet when he f eels that he has been taken advantage ofto an unfair degre e. The conversation is punctuated with repetition to make points, forc eful gesturing, forays into notes or correspondence fo r docum entation and occasional bits of humor..It is a com posite of Mike Goodwin on th e AMA , his problems, th e riders, promoting, sponsors and a lot mo re. "As you may have heard there is more than one side to every story. We (Stadium Motorsports) got a contract from the AMA back in February of '77 to work on sponsors for the AMA . We sold the Coca-Col a /Mr. PiBB deal. Since we were fortunate enough in securing more sponsors and TV than the AMA was doing themselves, I approached the AMA board of trustees and said 'W hy don't we expand my good luck and let everyone e lse benefit from it since apparently many sponso rs feel comfor table work ing with me - although I know there are a lot of people who don't like working with mecause I'm so abrasive. "After qu ite a bit of proddi ng , the AMA saw th e wisdom of the idea and made two cont r acts ou t with me. One specifically with Coca -Cola and one a b la nk contract to go ou t a nd sol icit new sponsors. One of those new sponsors was Toyota wh ich I started ap ' proaching in Janua ry of '77 . I met with board mem bers in May and told th em that I was getting pretty .close to Toyota and that I wanted that com pa ny stipulated in my cont ract. They sa id fine . I met with the AMA again in June when I had signed Toyota for a pilot program for m y L.A . Supercross and told them that Toyota wanted the stadium series next year. At that time I still did not have in writing the agreement that Toyota was m y sponsorship package. "I had a blank contract with no written confirmation . I learned from promoting rock shows that you had better do a lot of CYA (cover your ass). So , in my Toyota agreement I negotiated an exclusive clause that I was to represent them for all motocross dealings. That was so that if the AMA tried to back out on me I had a stop gap measure. " O ne thing that may not be apparent to people is that there is a lot of work in sponsor solicitation. The Toyota deal is a big on e . But a person might go through 100 prospects before he finally lands one. "We went ahead with the deal and I probably gave Toyota $50,000 worth of advertising for their $10 ,000 investment in the L.A. event because I knew that th ey wan ted th e wh ole seri es in '78 and tha t everyone would ben efit. T hey (Toyot a) saw wh at mo tocross was a ll about a nd liked it. We th en started to neg otiate the deal for the series. I met with Bob Rud olph (President of the AM A Board of Trustees) and ( Com m issioner of Professional Racing) Doug Mockett in late August with a member of m y staff to confirm that five sponsors were mine. among them Toyota , Citicorp, Schlitz and Coca -Cola and one other. "T he Toyota deal progressed to the point where they said 'a ll we need is budget approval and we're all set .' They were to give $10 ,000 to each promoter with a non -televised event and $20 ,000 to those with television p lus PR and advertising support . There was also to be a $50,000 rider point fund . Everything was looking beautiful. "T he onl y thing I ca n surmise is that Mockett got wind of how well it was going because I got a letter from him telling me that I did NOT have an agreement with the AMA for the Toyota deal. I was to hold off a nd not do anything until they formulated a written contract which I never got. I wrote back that once you have a deal and you are work ing on it , you don 't just tell someone that all of a sudden they don 't hav e a deal. You don 't do that. We had a deal even though it wasn't a written contract at that point. "At that point Mockett was very , very smart. He got me int o a hassle on the TV rights for m y Anaheim Supercross event. Television has characteristically and historically been the property of the promoter and the promoter ha s been the one to sell the rights- ·although that is in d irect conflict of the sanction agreement which states that the AMA owns the television rights. It has been standard practice by the promotor to sell it since the AMA didn't have the time or ta lent to work on the deals . " Fra nkly, I think that if we had to give the TV away we should do it to get TV hooked on racing: Then we sell it. That is not the prevailing attitude with Doug. He wants tons of money the first time in and that is why we are going to have problems get · ting TV interested. . "Back to the Anaheim deal : Mockett came to me after I had notified him of m y N BC contract and said that I di dn't have the right to sell the TV rig hts and to send him the contract. Without going into detai l, there were at least a dozen pieces of correspondence and $2 ,200 worth of legal fees on my part plus easi ly as m uch on the AMA 's part . The outcome was that I owned the TV and Mockett didn't have the right to screw around with it. Why did it tak e tha t kind of . cra p? Why did he have to asse rt himself to that poi nt? " I then lea rned th at a fte r te lling me to hold off on

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