Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

- and they all want things on site. That's what we have to discuss with the promoters. The promoters all want site money, but I'm trying to justify a points fund. Let's tum our attention to supercross. How do you feel about AIR? On a personal level it has been very difficult. Two of the principals - Bill West and Roy Janson - make this a difficult situation for me. Roy and 1 worked together for some time at the AMA; Bill West has been a good friend of mine for 17 years. Bill was very instrumental in getting me into Wrangler and other projects in this industry. In fact , I used to spend Christmas at his house. Sometimes he would live with me for weeks at a time when he came to Road Atlanta. I go back a long way with both of those guys. To get to this point where they are attacking me personally is difficultto understand. They have their side of the whole AMA-AIR question, and then there's the AMA's side. How do you feel about Roy janson's sudden departure from the AMA to AIR? Roy and I have long had different philosophies on how to do business and maybe that's helping to create so much difficulty. We worked together on a lot of projects during our time together at the AMA. I thought we knew what each other was doing, so it was a total shock to me when he did leave. We had no way of knowing that it was coming. You see, Roy was helping me design several alternative planning projects at the AMA, the same projects that he's now so up in arms about as a member of the AIR team. Truth be told, Roy gave us the working documents on how to do those new programs, such as sports promotions and marketing. How chance that he might have put together a deal with Bill West in one d ay, but to give your two-weeks notice one day and then quitting the next to start a new job with a rival company doesn't seem right, does it? How does AMA feel about AIR as a sanctioning body? The AMA does not yet acknowledge AIR. We still want to negotiate with the three Supercross promoters in' the group. We would like to resume negotiations with PACE-Supersports, MTEG and SRO and talk terms with them individually. AIR may be up and running, but we don't want to sanction another sanctioning body, just promoters. Was there any consultation between AIR and the AMA about the 1995 schedule? No. I've been going back through the paperwork and as late as July 12 we were still talking about the sanctions, not the '95 schedule. AIR and the promoters are trying place the blame of the breakdown on the AMA because of a lack of communication. I've been personally attacked about not being able to communicate. There was never a lack to communicate with them or within the AMA. If anything, we are communicating too much. That's what makes the AMA too cumbersome, the fact that we have to communicate so much back and forth. On May 9 there was a meeting in Chicago with Bill West (PACE-Supersports), Rick Miller (MTEG) and Charlie Mancuso (SRO). On our side there was myself, Paul Dean (Chairman of the AMA's Board of Trustees) and Carl Reynolds (BOT Treasurer). We had lots of discussion but we didn't make any concrete decisions because the process takes time. But they said we broke off with far-reaching implications and a lot of that never got resolved, even after lots of discussion. Let's talk about the long-term deal with the AMA that the promoters wanted so badly: How close were the two sides? Well, they wanted to be able to contract . sponsors to extended five-year term, but the AMA sa id we would only go with a three-year deal at one time. Why did the AMA not want to go to a five-year deal? We were going to concede all marketing and television rights for between three or five years, whatever it turned out to be. But they wanted even more control for those five years, control over things like scheduling, event format, general rule-making. It got to the point where we felt like no more than a service vendor for the promoters, just like the guys that bring in dirt or do the concessions. In fact, they even wanted equal say about all uniforms that AMA officials would wear on site at the Supercross events! That's the way they wanted us to be - the AMA are the guys in suits who show up, run the races and then Just leave...And we didn't even get to pick the suit! What did the AMA want to change? Originally, we wanted to take television rights back after '95. The AMA usually controls television and broadcast rights, but in the case of supercross we waived that for a couple of years. We think that our current three-year deal with ESPN and ESPN 2 for the outdoor Nationals is better than the deal that supercross struck. We have a good package with twice the coverage, better time slots and a very reasonable price. Ask any of the (outdoor) promoters about that: The idea was it to send those guys to Minneapolis in the middle of January? That was their idea. We know that's not a good idea. It could be 20 below and there may be some real travel dangers to the riders and the mechanics, bu t the promoters want to sell tickets. They don 't care about what the factories want. It's long been held that the factories don't want to start in Orlando, either, but we always ended up starting there. Maybe that came about because in the past we made the mistake of letting the promoters do what they want, like making the factories drive across the country to Orlando to start the season. We always tried to be accommodating" maybe too accommodating. Another big concern of the promoters seems to be Paradama, the AM A's new marketing group... The one thing everyone constantly complains about is that the AMA never , takes a leadership role in bringing in sponsors the way someon.e like NA5CAR does. 50 we make a few inquiries, do a few studies and realize that it's big business. We know that the current Board of Trustees is no longer equipped to deal withthings like sponsorship and television on a full-time basis, so we decide to go ahead and develop our own sports marketing agency. In my mind, the number one thing that needs to be done is to appoint, not elect, a new board of direc- , tors, all of whom would be from motorsports and entertainment business backgrounds. Then a professional staff and myself would report to this board of five or six professional businessmen with clout who can direct us . We would have quicker response to our sponsors and we would be better equipped to grow. We would have to be like that he ended up with a competitive sanctioning body five or six days later is shocking and really suspicious to me. So Janson's departure was a surprise? Well, while I was on business in California, Roy walked into Ed Young- , blood's office and said "I quit." He didn't even wait until I got back. The date was August 4 and he said he needed a change in his life. He said he was going back to his home state of New York to do different things, like start going towards his life-long goal of being the manager at Watkins Glen. He gave his two-weeks notice and said he would be doing a little job-hunting along the way. At noon the next day he quit altogether and said he was a now a consultant with PACE Management. The very next day PACE said they were not going to apply for AMA sanctions in 1995. I couldn't believe Roy's actions. I mean, we were close enough as friends that I was hoping we could go to a personal growth-seminar together then all this happens. Do you think that this was planned all along? I really don't want to believe that...But I don't know how he couldn't have discussed things with the supercross promoters group . Of course there's a talks. Then on July 12 we met again and we told them that there were a lot of deal-breakers that needed to be worked out. They wanted a deal that day, but I said that no more decisions or counter proposals could be made until the August 26 AMA Board meeting. I'm just .not authorized to do anymore than that. That may have been their point of contention, but I just needed to get in front of my Board before I could move ahead. What were some of the things that you had to talk to the Board about? Going all the way back to May 9, there was lots to talk about - like sponsorships and who controls them in the AMA Supercross Series. The promoters thought they owned the rights because they put the effort into promoting each event. They felt that because they put on 15 of 16 events they owned all of the rights . Sponsorship wasn't the only issue. There was a question like The Source International's Supercross video-game project - do the promoters get a piece of the action if it's an AMA Supercross game? Does the AMA have rights to a trading card set? They felt that because the images were taken from their events, they should get a piece of that action. Those are issues funny thing is, taking back television was just something that we were exploring. We would have eventually conceded it for the term of the agreement. The biggest hang-up in the negotiations kept coming back to final approval of sanction issues. It got to the point where in one conference call they had some lawyers on the line and they proposed that the AMA go with them before some pre-selected arbitration board. "We're not going to that," said the Board. A lot of this was brought up by Charlie Mancuso, who never seemed to understand the need for the AMA . A year or two ago they lost the Seattle ' Kingdome date and wanted to put in Cleveland instead. Roy (Janson) said no, but Charlie was adamant about getting that race. Charlie felt that it was his choice as the bu sinessman who risks all this money. He just didn't want to be told no. The problem was the we have to consider a lot of factors when we schedule; things like logistics and travel patterns. Roy personally made that decision. Now we're the guys that they say can't do the scheduling just because Roy left. But we can't sign away everything. The AMA needs some control. Let's go back to scheduling. Who's because this business is getting big and we have to be ready to compete, but instead we're being painted as a some kind of takeover group, and that's just not true. Does the AMA have any aspirations to get into the business of promoting motorcycle events? Maybe in the future, but only in growth sports; maybe dirt track, initially. We would want to go into any sport that needs to grow, but never at the expense of a current promoter. For instance, dirt track is being expanded from 24 to 30 events for next year, which shows that it is a sport on the rise . But how can you grow anymore than a series with '30 events already on the schedule? Well, 30 events is a lot, but dirt track is just something we are looking into. Maybe there will be a situation like an outdoor National motocross where a new promoter can't do it on his own. We would go in and help finance him, help promote the event and share in the profits, but never in way that would harm our old promoters. But that would eventually become unavoidable. For instance, what if one of your new events that Paradama produces becomes bigger than some of ~ 0\ 0\ ...... N ...... .... Q) .g tJ o 19

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