Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

.RACING ~AT· THE: q .R.oSSRQAO$ Chapter 1: AMA Vice President Tom Mueller MA Vice-President Tom Mueller has a lot on his plate. In addition to a new supercross sanctioning body tha t threatens to take control of supercross racing in the United States, there's Roger Edmondson's proposed new road racing series - a series tha t plans to run against ~e existing AMA U.S. Superbike Series . Suddenly faced with the likelihood that there will be competition on both fronts, Mueller is faced with a monumental task as the man on the hot seat in AMA racing. We directed some questions at Mueller during the AMA National at Road Atlanta, and also at his office in Westerville, Ohio. Let's begin with road racing. Is the series Roger Edmondson is trying to start a threat to the existing AMA U.S. Superbike Series? We're so busy rigllt now getting ready . for 1995, I don't really feel worried . We're just busy trying to do a better job. All we 've heard this year is where we are deficient in a lot of areas. All we've heard is that the AMA needs to take more leadership, that we've got to do a better job. We've been working our asses off to bring a better program to 1995. A . , with AMA Pro Racing, not CCS. Now he (Roger) is doing more, by adding superbike. We'll just have to wa it and see what kind of field he gets and what the event turns out like. We sure can't stop him from running sup erb ike because there's no agreement between us for 1995. What exactly happened with the socalled "agreement" with Edmondson? On April 22, 1994, we all met in Chicago. Roger was there, and on our side we had, and I don't remember everybody who was there, our negotiating team. We put this group together to go there and talk with Roger because there was a lot of stuff up in the air about 1995. We walked into the meeting and it was Greg Bennett, Roger and Peggy (Edmondson's wife), and to our very big surprise, Pat Murphy - sitting on Roger's side of the table. That was Pat's decision, but I also happened to be paying Pat, as well as Roger, this year. So there was a problem there. He's (Murphy) negotiating on Roger's side of the table - that was a little difficult for us. We got through it and we came out of there with a lot of agreements and theories. We go t a lot of things down on paper. We got an agreement prepared and sent back to them on May 6, and that agreement was with what we thought the terms should be. We got a reply from them that said that Roger didn't compete. We were going to pay Roger everything he makes now for doing his CCS Supersport stu ff, his race manager agreement, everything...We were going to pay him that amount for five years to do nothing. Just to not compete. . He came back with this death benefit thing, and that became somewhat of a deal-breaker on our side. On his side, in the RMS agreement, we asked for five plus two. Five years of no-compete, plus two. So it would actually be a seven-year no-compete. That was a deal-breaker for Roger and he wouldn't take that. So we had a couple of things that were breaking up the deal. Finally we came back to them on June 24th and said we'd concede the death benefit. The AMA was even considering buying a life-insurance policy on Roger so in case he did pass away we would have a life insurance policy to payoff that five-year agreement. On June 28th we received a letter back from him rejecting the AMA and the proposed agreements. Since we had conceded the dea th benefit, I guess the problem was the five year plus two. Then we went all the way to early July when we gave them one day's notice. We said, "guys, we're going to take it off the table." I know there's talk that we pulled it off the table too soon, but this had been weeks and weeks. The AMA finally decided that we were taking it off the table . That was early July. It went back to the board meeting in late August and we decided at that point that we were not going to 'renew the offer. It had been six months and we were not going to put a new offer on the table. That's how the whole thing went together. Why is it so important for the AMA to judgment. This may take awhile, but we've asked a judge to make a decision if Roger has 'a compete or no-compete with us for 1995. That's going to be in the court system. But do you expect any litigation to come from Edmondson? I really don't know. All I know is that legally, from our side, we will be filing this week. What about a schedule for next year, _ Not event-wise, but the actual race-day schedule? We still have to meet with the promoters, but it's pretty much what you've heard. There seems to be a lot of people still interested in 125s, but I just don't feel that's the future. I think we'll run Superteams -, the former Unlimited Team Challenge - and 750cc Supersport on Saturday. We're cancelling the Middleweight Team Challenge and just running Superteams. We'll have a nice clean four-race event on Sunday - 2505, 600cc Supersport, Superbike and Harleys. That's what we're proposing and we're going to talk to the promoters about it. At how many events? Ten or 11 - probably. We were hoping to have Homestead, Florida, but that won't be done until late 1995 so that will probably be a 1996 event. We're hoping to go with the existing promoters and maybe add one more. So we won't see any Paradama-promoted (the AMA's new for-profit sports marketing company) road race . events in 1995? No . Not tha t I see. Paradama seems to ' have raised a lot of anxiety in the industry. Somebody out there is propagating untrue facts that this is so m e huge takeover machine. We ha ve no interest in successful events. None. • ~ ~ 0\ 0\ ~ N" ~ '"' Q) 'B o 18 This new announcement from Roger (Edmondson) confirms the things we'd heard rumors about. We're moving down the road. We have a meeting with the promoters scheduled, and that's something we haven't done in years. We're going to present our whole program for next year . We've had a good conference call with Jim France (of Daytona International Speedway). We feel fine about that situation. There were no questions raised about any problems with running our AMA program. We're just going to run a good program. I think the best way to handle it is to do better. If we run a good strong AMA program, I don't think we'll be threatened by any of this. Did it surprise you that the Frances were so supportive of Roger and gave him the two race dates at Daytona International Speedway? Not really. Those are traditional dates that Roger always had at Daytona. Those are the CCS dates prior to Speedweek and in the fall. In a phone conversation I had with France he asked me if the issues with Roger were going to affect his CCS weekends. I told him no, that it wouldn't have any effect on what he does with Roger. We were dealing want just one agreement. He wanted a Roger agreement and an RMS agreement. We didn't even know what RMS was. You know how we found out, we got a lawsuit filed to us at one point for some CCS lawsuit. That happens in business and in racing. So the AMA got sued and the other party that got sued in this lawsuit was AMA/RMS. What in the hell was that? Well, we did a search and it stands for AMA Race Management Services, and it's another corporation that Roger has. Evidently; he's been doing business through that for CCS. He told us that he wanted a Roger Edmondson agreement and an RMS agreement. So we did that, we split out these two separate agreements, redraft- . ed them and sent them back . We didn't hear back for a while. On May 24th, we received another correspondence Roger wanted a death benefit in his contract. If he died the full payment of . this agreement would be paid to his heirs. We thought about this and to be honest, legally and not emotionally, if Roger were to die there goes the nocompete. The whole thing we were trying to buy was a no-compete. I can't tell you numbers (rumored to be $1.5 million.. .Editor), but it was a five-year agreeme!'t that stated that he couldn't not have Edmondson compete? Why did the AMA feel as though they had to pay him anything at all? The AMA truly believes that we don't want this disrupted. What will Roger do? Will it fragment? We don't know. We can 't guarantee that it's going to be a perfect world out there. We were willing to pay all that money just so it wouldn't fragment. It would take him out of the road racing business because Roger 's claim always was that he would compete. The only reason we would put that kind of money up is so that he would not compete. There was a lot of discussion on who owns classes. Who owns Supersport? We believe through our attorneys that no one owns classes. They run them in Europe, they run them here - we feel that anyone can run those race classes. We never felt that we were buying anything. Is the AMA worried about pending litigation with Edmondson? Yes. Let me tell you something that's going on right now . We believe, through our attorneys, that our last contract with Roger has a no-compete with him through 1995. He doesn't agree. We have filed in a Federal Court and we have asked a judge for a declaratory Is the road race television package intact for next season? Yes. Loudon and Daytona were grandfathered in because they had existing television packages. The rest of our TV programming is on a three-year contract with Prime - with the first year of that being in 1994. So we have '95 and '96 to go on a three-year contract with Prime. It's a done deal. The TV is intact. Prime has been great and they are willing to work with us on a lot of different things. What about a series sponsor for superbike racing next year? It's difficult. I'm going to be sharing this with the promoters, and I'll share it with you - we have contacted over 100 companies. We work on it, but it's difficult. We all hear the rumors about million-dollar sponsors - but there is no activity out there in motorsports right now. There are a couple of individuals that we're still making sales calls on we're still trying to play out a lot of hands. Right now I'd feel very, very lucky if we had something for next year. The first thing we always start off with is a points fund for superbike. That's what we need to do - pump more money to the riders. These companies want to know what they're going to get

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