Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

J~ACING 'AT THE :CROSSROADS C hapter 3: RogerE mon d dson an dPatMurphy By Dean Adams oger Edmondson carries the biggest s tick in the road racing forest . The fo rmer racer and stereo salesman left WERA racing in the early 19805to create his own amateur racing organization Championship Cup Series - that with careful planning and plotting blossomed into, on the professiona l level, th e Su perspor t, Harley-David son Tw in Sports and endurance classes. Edmondson quite visibly ran AMA professional road racing for the past half decad e and during that time the sport improved to the po int where it is arguably the most profitable Na tional-level road racing series in the world. In 1995 Edmondson , and his assoc iate Pat Murphy, the former press and s 0\ ~ N" ~ , 1-0 (l) "B o 26 marketing director for the AMA, plan to sanction their own races under the North American Superbike Series banner, p romising television coverage and competitive purses. There are those who discount Edmondson's ability to accomplish this feat, but there is little question that he may have an inroad to the promoters, many of whom he claims have already been quietly trying to talk him into the move he recently made. Does he have the sup port of the factories in both con tingency sponsorship and in fielding their teams in his series? Onl y time will tell. . Ed mondso n and Murphy sat down for an interview while at the final round of the AMA U.S. Superbike Series in Road Atlanta to discuss their new series and the events that brought them to this juncture in their careers. Let's have a brief bio from the both of you. (Murphy) In October of 1985 I was hired by the AMA to be its marketing and public relations manager. My previous employment was as the advertising manager for Yamaha's accessories divi- sion. I worked in the AMA headquarters in Ohio for two years and then for family reasons had to leave and move back to California. The AMA appreciated my work enough at the time to ask me to form my own company to contin ue to do the same business by contract. So, in October of 1987 I went back to California and created PM Communicati on s, with the AMA as my sole client. At the end of 1988 Roger Edmondson, who I knew casually from the ra ce track, called and asked if I had any inte rest in providing marketing services to CCS. At tha t tim e CCS alrea dy had Supersport racin g as part of the Pro p rogram. We qu ickly came to terms and I took Roger an d CCS on as my second client. Since tha t time I have had both those parties as clien ts in one form or ano the r every year, and it has also opened up to where I do other work for other entities, mainly in motorcycling and always in motorsports. fixed in pro road racing. We went to one event and the situation was such that when Daytona was over we had to actually take it on and run it (the professional road race program). 1 thought that job was done at the end of the 1988 season and 1 got out of it, and spent a year out, but the re were significant problems in the way that the events were being managed in 1989. Enough so that during that year we agreed to take those classes that we were provid ing to the promoters, which were the Supersport classes and the endurance classes, and , at the time, we were in the process of creating the Harley class. We agree d to take th ose classes that we we re selling separately to the p romoters and join wit h the AMA with their classes w hich were 250, Superbike and Twins, and create a joint ven tu re . And w e ha ve opera te d th at way since the 1990 seaso n. Last year, in mid October, we went to visit the AMA to di scu ss some adjust- things beyond what the AMA was offering were always there. But much of the negotiat ions I had with the AMA involved them pa ying me not to com pete. This thing was far enough down the road that I had closed my office at the racing offices, and had moved back to my office at my house where I run my other bu sinesses. 1was prepared not to be competing at the top level. In the meantime, Pat and 1still felt there was a need for events over and above wha t the AMA schedules. So, w hen the word came that 1 didn't have a deal with the AMA, and was no longer goi ng to be bound by any pu rse ceilings or anything else and was free to go out and seek my own level in the marketplace, Pat d ecided to ta ke these th in g s tha t we ha ve ,been talking about qu ietly and let them achie ve whatever level they could. (Murphy) Tha t's accurate. Since mid summer Roger and I hav e looked at promoting new racing, d eveloping som e (Edmondson) I d on' t think there is anything that isn't common knowledge. I have been at this since 1973 when I started racing. I had a good time racing and got involved in organizing events and enjoyed that, too. That kind of just lead us to where we are today. The first season of Cha mpionship Cup was 1984. . You are no longer with th e AMA and , will sanction you r own events under the North American Superbike series banner in 1995. How did that happen? Specifically, how is it that you are no longer with the AMA? (Mu rphy) I was informedvia fax the week before Mid-Ohio that AMA wan ted to bring its marketing relations activit ies in- h o use and that m y serv ices would not be required for the 1995 season. Subsequent to that, Roger and I . decided to do something else. (Edmondson) To know why I left, or why I'm out, or not there any more, you have to know how "in " I was at one point in time. My invol vement 'w ith the AMA Pro department began in 1986 when I was asked to come aboard as a road race coordinator. My role that year . was to take notes of what needed to be merits that need ed to be made in the jo in t venture, some things that we weren't happy with an d things that they weren't happy with. We sat down and they told us they wanted to buy us out. And so, from October 12th until most recently, we have been trying to determine how that was going to go. In that time frame since, we made an offer to actually pay the AMA to operate the series and try to d o th e sa me thing on the p ro level tha t we ha d d on e on th e a mateur lev el. A lot o f peop le do no t realize that the AMA /CCS program is not the AMA's program, it is a privat e business that is sanctioned by the AMA. It has been operated and funded and all the rul es ha ve been written by p rivate parties. We are prepared to do the same thing in p ro road racing . The AMA decided that they would like it all inhouse . Th e last 12 months that we've been trying to make tha t business deal have been more difficult than an ybody anticipated. ' How quickly did this new series come together? , (Edmondso n) The elements and the feelings that there was always a need for marketing concepts that would let this sport grow. As he said, at the time, we were working on the assumption that he was going to be under some agreement with the AMA that was going to keep him from promoting events that had large p urses. And so we were looking at kind of a pro-am type of program and , of course, were planning to do this totally without conflict with any of t he AMA's p ro fessiona l programs. When they ~eneged on their offer, then we simply upped...we had the basic ideas in mind, but not wit hout any restrictions as far as the size of our p urses or the dates we had open to run. We simply enlarged our vision. Pat, what was your role in developing contingency sponsors for the Supersport, Harley-Davidson and Endurance clas ses for th e AMA? (Murphy) I have personally been responsib le for the development of every contingency program, the solicitation of every contingency program for every AMA professional series, every CCS profess ional series from 1986 through 1994 - single-handedly. I have communicated with all of the factories

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