Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

., Edmondson Q Let's start at the beginning. A-We had a joint-venture contract rtwith the AMA where our business and theirs were joined, to crea te the AMA National races. We went to a meeting in October of 1993, my wife, Peggy, and I, with the AMA, for some planning for 1994. Particularly, as (then AMA vice president of sports marketing, Dick) Maxwell had just been fired. We were looking at another whole era of nobody in charge. Every time that would happen, it would eventually lead to us trying to fill the gap, even though r wasn't an employee. We sat down at a meeting, and Ed Youngblood said that they had made a decision that they wanted to bring their own program in- . house and that they wanted to buy me out of the contract. Did they make an offer at that point? No, what he asked me to do was create for him some ideas on how they could accomplish tha t. r pointed out to him that when r was leaving there, r was coming home, getting the motorhome, and going straight to Daytona for the Race of Champions and going straight from there to Ireland for the FIM Congress, because I was on the road racing commission then. 50 he said yes, but could I try to get together by the FIM Congress. 50, actually, I'd raised a proposal right here in this building. r sat down with my Macintosh and put some proposals together. I figured three proposals, three alternatives. One was, they could buyout my program for $3 million bucks over a period of 10 years. And I showed them how between the revenue that my programs 'were generating; plus the memberships that they were selling on the CC5 side, that they wouldn't have to touch their treasury at all. All the profits that I would earn would simply become theirs. For the alternative, I offered to the AMA what (World 5uperbike owners) FIammini has done for the FIM. I offered them $3 million·. $300,000 a year for 10 years so that they would sanction Pro road racing. We would':ve taken it, run it, sold it, marketed it, operated it. At the end of the 10 years, I was prepared to retire and give it back to them. And the third alternative was that we form a real corpora tion with shareholders and try to bring some of the other professionals in the industry into this and make it a professional racing operation. By the time I got to Ireland, r didn't want to present that proposal, so I withdrew that third proposal. I was so disappointed that the AMA, out of the blue, wanted to, basically, take over the pro- . gram, that I didn't want to be in business with them anymore. That's how it started. The AMA board had to agree on this and, unfortunately, many of them were not aware of the joint venture and took the position that I didn't own these things. (They) came back with a counteroffer that was an insult. Q. A 14 Q Which was what? A- $125,000 a year for five years, a conrtsulting contract. I can't remember, but all in all it was about $425,000, $500,000 - I don't remember exactly. Which is about two years running the sport, which was my share of it. I wanted to earn about $250,000 a year. And that was strictly through AMAracing? Absolutel y . You have to understand A that the 5upersport programs and the endurance program and the Harley program were all programs that I created by rights. Brought a new market, paid the purse until the promoters took it on. In reality, my half of the joint venture was creating 70 percent of the revenue that the AMA was splitting 50-50. Q And that was because of the number of entries in those classes? A- Absolutely. And, again, those classrtes, if you think back, that was all new money. That money wasn't there before. So it's not like this took anything from the AMA or from the promoters. It was all new revenue which was created by new activity. At any rate, it became clear. that we were pretty far apart. And it was kind of a tough time of the year; it was November. We've got another season to get going here shortly. There was nobody, to me, nobody in charge. Frankly, on that trip r was going to visit all the promoters and set up the program for '94. So on that trip I did visit all the promoters, but I had to explain to them that I didn't know at that point in time whether it was going to go back to the old days, where the AMA would present a contract, and [ would present a contract, and they would make a separate deal with the AMA and a separate deal with me - or whether the AMA was going to be the guy or I was going to be. I didn't know what it was going to be, but I felt that as a customer they had a right to know who they were going to deal with. Q HOW long did the promoters have one contrad? Q A They'd been using one contract for rtall the time. The agreement they had with me started in 1984, my endurance racing, and then, as I brought in the 5upersport, it was a verbal contrilCt. So they had two deals: Starting in J 990, which was the first year of the joint venture, they got one. contrad, and that lasted through 1994. The gist of it was that we were pretty far apart. So on December 17, Ed Youngblood wrote me a letter asking me to go one more year on the joint venture, so we could have time to· work this out, so as nQt to destroy the good relationship we had over the yea rs. He could see I was tense. I had seen the AMA reach out and take companies before. QWhere? . AThe Battle of the Twins. Q Who'd they take that from? Dick O'Brian - not Dick O'Brian but A Jesse O'Brian. And J had been asked at one time to go out 'and investigate the potential of taking over vintage racing. 50 I knew there was a propensity, and J was very much on edge. 50 J got this letter from Ed. What I didn't know, and what I found out through (the legal process of) discovery, was the very same date he had received a memo, that he had asked for, on how to take over the road,racing. QHe'd received a letter on... February 1. From his staff - Roy JanA son. He had asked Roy Janson to prepare a memo on how he could take over the road racing program without Roger's cooperation, without Roger's knowledge. So, effectively, in this current trial it became known as the secret takeover. And it was dated the same day that I got this letter, saying, "Hey, Roger, we're good buddies; why don't we go another year to give ourselves time?" And from that point on, negotiations went on for many, many months all the way through August of '94. There was some upheavals in February. I challenged him because they had announced a TV schedule when I didn't even get the courtesy of talking with them about television. As a result, if you remember, in February of '94, all of a sudden there was a press release: "We're not doing business with Roger anymore." This was a week before Daytona. I had all the entries, all the radios, all the computers - everything it took to run the event was in my possession. The AMA was going to do it themselves, 'which of course lasted for 24 hours. But that was the first blip.on the radar screen for everybody, and it sent me a real message. That was resolved here in Daytona? " A-That was resolved right here (Dayrttona). They were to come down. to Daytona to explain why they were having to send me out of the way. Q YOU met with the France family, which owns Daytona. A-We all did. The first meeting was fiwith Bill Jr. and Jimmy, (then AMA vice president of competition) Tom Mueller, Ed Youngblood, Roy Janson (the pro racing director at the time), and the ever-present Tim Owens, who was the brilliant attorney who led them right down this'rosy path. And then they called Peggy and J into the room and said that we would like to find a way you can work together. So quite ~learly we agreed to go back into the joint venture for that full season. Within 30 days, the AMA was trying to exercise a cancellation clause in an effort to force me to sign a short contract. That didn't work too well. But to make a long story short, we all managed to pound out, in April, a new agreement that was going to pay me a million-two and provide - it was based on a formula that was going to give me so much, so much an entry, for five .years, and it provip,ed for me to suppod the AMA national program and continue doing it. And one of the things that one of them said was that J should create a new ground, a midContinued on page 16 Q

• Cover