Cycle News - Archive Issues - 2000's

port or independent teams that are out there. Going back to your previous question, what would make the manufacturers get more involved, we need to have a consistent TV package going into the future. That's something that we're still working on. There will be highlights this coming year of each round on both Bike Week and Motoworld. So that's a small step in the right direction. The Mosport round, there will be a one-hour televised show from that because Colin Fraser will be putting that together on the Canadian side. It will be televised in the U.S. on OLN, Outdoor Living Network. Why isn't there a television package? We haven't been able to pull all of the elements together yet. We haven't been able to pull the production and the time on TV together and make it work financially. What teams in particular have come and gone? First of all, off the top of my head, would be Hooters Suzuki. I believe they're going to have Michael Barnes and Larry Pegram. Valvoline, I think we're only going to see selected riders at selected rounds. I think their contract with their sponsors is to do AMA. That's what they have to focus on. Arclight [Suzuki], absolutely, they're the primary support team for Formula USA from American Suzuki. [Shawn] Higbee, still with KWS. I know that he's keen to run the Sportbike class and we just came up with another incentive for him to run that class. We've been working on, over the last three months, I guess, I don't know if the word is resurrecting or re-inventing what used to be the Grand National Championship. Basically, it's selected rounds of the Formula USA dirt track series and selected rounds of the road race series. On the road race side, the competition will be in the Sportbike class, and on the dirt track side it'll be in the Pro Singles class. Riders can earn points in both of those at selected events that will go toward a Grand National Championship. We now have a new $50,000 for the Sportbike class in road racing, $50,000 for the Pro Singles class in dirt track, and then $50,000 for the combined championship points fund for the Grand National. And along with that comes TV coverage. There's going to televised coverage of the Sportbike class and the Pro Singles class. These will be hour-long shows on a network that'll be determined in the next couple of days. When Clear Channel took over after the first season, there was a considerable reduction in purse and points fund. Why? We kind of said back there right after the first season, Wrenchead.com didn't return as our sponsor, so I had to make those tough and unpopular decisions to cut purse and change the class structure, add classes, rather than reduce the number of classes. But it wasn't so much a function of what company, what family we were a part of. That really didn't have much to do with it. Motorsports is an important but small part of the overall Clear Channel family, Clear Channel worldwide. (Editor's note: According to their 2000 shareholder report, Clear Channel had net revenues of $5.3 billion in 2000). We're pretty much left to our own devices, how to structure the series and determine the rules and determine how to get people out to the races. We are a publicly owned company, so we report ultimately to the stockholders, and when you say you're going to make X amount or you project that you're going to have these kind of earnings, then that's what you need to do. The number-one priority is to meet those projections. How difficult is it to get dates at quality race tracks? The better tracks already have a ton of car racing, motorcycle racing, all kinds of activity at those events. Some of those events, Mid-Ohio and Laguna Seca, are limited to the number of large spectator events that they can have. Some of the groups are entrenched at these facilities, so it's really hard to get dates; you've got to be standing in line when those openings are available Are you concerned about th"e criticism of racing at Loudon, a track the AMA no longer visits? Our affiliate, Loudon Road Racing Series, runs there eight times a year, they run in rain or shine. They have a very good safety record there at the facility. Our premier class, the Lockhart-Phillips Superbike class, is dyno-controlled, it's limited to 145 horsepower, they're still very fast, they still accelerate very hard and still go very fast, but I don't they have the sort of top speeds of some of the other classes out there. So I think that gives us an advantage going in there. We will be implementing at least a minimum of 20 pieces of Airfence everywhere we go with the national series this year. I was just at the LRRS banquet where the track has decided to purchase another 50 pieces of Super Defender from Alpina out of Austria. I think the track is going to be safer than ever and, again, I think that our classes, with some of the restrictions on them, are safer at a facility like Loudon. Will you run in the rain at Loudon? A Absolutel Y. We run ,treaded tires. Although, the new generation of treaded tires are getting to look more and more like slicks every year, which makes things a little difficult when you are considering situations like at the end of last year, the last few laps of the superbike finale at Daytona. The riders are on DOT tires, but when it starts raining as hard as it did. You definitely have to watch the weather. You definitely have to be more cognizant of the conditions out on course because the tires have become practically slick racing tires. Which tracks did you try to get dates at this season, but couldn't? We had a dialogue going with Laguna Seca, but the general manager that was there up until the middle of December abruptly left. Since then, they've hired a new manager, but I think as it turns out, one of their spectator events - they're only allowed to have five spectator events there - one of those slots had become open and I'm sure that we were not the only ones vying for a weekend there. Homestead, we've been communicating with them. It's still an opportunity that we're looking at, but it's getting so far into this season that I'm not sure that we want to spring another event on competitors and folks budgetwise. What about Willow Springs? A That's just an unfortunate situation. We had every intention of going back in April, unfortunately the AMA scheduled their event at California Speedway two weeks before our established date at Willow Springs, so it would have been a very bad idea for us to carryon with that event. We went to schedule it later in the year and the track has decided to do their 200-mile race. At one point, we were going to partner with them and run our full program, but the track decided they wanted to focus fully on their 200-mile event, so I think we're kind of out at Willow for 2002, but we stay in contact with the track and I'm more than willing to go back in 2003. cue HOW does being a member of the Clear Channel Entertainment family help in promoting the races? That's one of the fantastic things about haVing all of these enormous resources. We're just now starting to scratch the surface and starting to implement many of the resources that we have at our fingertips. Radio buys, we still have to pay for our radio time, but obviously, as a member of the family, so to speak, we can obviously get a better deal on it than if we weren't. I think you'll see us starting to utilize billboards. Clear Channel owns over half a million billboards. That's a medium I think that hasn't been exploited and I think we need to take advantage of that. I think the ownership just got completed last August, so we're not even into a full year yet of working together and taking advantage of all these opportunities. What type of racing fans are you going after? Q A I think if we made a mistake the first year it was probably trying too hard to make brandnew fans, to make brand-new spectators out of folks, we might have ignored existing sportbike enthusiasts or the sportbike crowd a little too much. I think we corrected that in 2001, and we're working even harder to reach those folks in 2002. You've got to market directly to them. We're going to have a stronger grass-roots campaign, where people that own sport bikes, people that follow motorcycle road racing, people that enjoy this kind of racing, that they know about it, that they find out about it, that they find out about it well in advance so that they can schedule to be at these events. I think that everyone would agree that motorcycle road racing is a challenging event to market to spectators. It's a lot different than supercross or arenacross or monster trucks, which are generally evening shows at a nice modern venue generally downtown somewhere. The crowds don't seem to be growing rapidly. We're concerned, and I think that's why we need to refocus our attention on the existing enthusiasts that are out there. I think they just don't know enough about our series and where we're running and when we're running. Or they don't find out about it until it's too late for them to be able to take an entire weekend off and come to one of our events. Again, I think TV's a big part of that. On the surface, you wouldn't think that TV would drive people to live events, but it's just the opposite of that. I think if they see a good event on TV and it's from somewhere across the country, they realize, "Hey, I've got to check this out.» Did you make a concerted effort not to have any conflicts with the AMA road race calendar? Initially I tried to avoid conflicts, but as our schedule grows and as the AMA schedule grows, I think there are going to be inevitable conflicts. Neither one of us, I would say, is at the top of the pecking order when it comes to getting dates at tracks. I think sometimes neither one of us has complete control over the date that we would ultimately like to have, so there's inevitably going to be conflicts. Amazingly, right now, there are no conflicts for 2002. I'm sure they probably have ours, what they think we're going to do and we do likewise. Any two companies doing the same sort of business are going to avoid each other when possible. I just don't think it's good business to try to be on top of each other when you're sharing a small group of competitors and a small group of enthusiastic spectators. eN I e n e _ 50 • FEBRUARY 27, 2002 33

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