In today’s edition of What’s Brewing we dig into a few topics of note recently.
Where’s Doug Coby going to be in 2025? What’s up the new division at the New London-Waterford Speedbowl? And why the Whelen Modified Tour fanbase is not growing?
LISTEN: What’s Brewing: Doug Coby In 2025, Speedbowl Crown Vic’s And A Disappearing Whelen Mod Tour Fanbase
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It’s taken years but we finally have some meat on the bone regarding what streaming means to local short track racing for those with an interest. JFoose of Speedway Action Magazine with a great overview of what streaming means to local short tracks written recently from a national perspective. Scott Tapley on a recent edition of Sids View the local perspective. Both the most credible, subjective sources I’ve seen addressing the increasingly important offshoot of local racing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpbOjM7nqu8
https://speedwayactionimages.com/2024/12/29/streaming-is-it-good-or-bad-for-local-tracks/
Watch, read and come to your own conclusions. Not only Tapley but all the Sids View participants providing frank assessments some of them a bit surprising.
-The beauty of the two sources is in general terms they land with the same conclusion and that is there is no one size fits all. There’s haves and have nots, winners and losers. More successful tracks like Stafford and Thunder Road with a first class product and high production values may benefit from streaming. Sure they lose live gate year over year as Tapley observed at Thunder Road but the Flo money mitigates the losses. Less successful tracks with sketchy streaming may end up net losers.
-In the same vein as one size does not fit all you can include subscription vs pay per view. Both have roles depending on the product offered and how best to monetize it. Flo may kick back 5 figures to include some tracks that have full seasons. PPV may be better for other tracks and events that are special like the non NASCAR parts of the Icebreaker with far greater financial rewards on an event by event basis. The MMTTS recognized this by allowing tracks to pick which format best serves their own best interest where we see subscription and PPV offerings.
-Are smaller tracks that opted to stream their own races helping or hurting themselves the jury still out. Tracks like Hudson, Claremont, Lee and others carried on RaceDayTV.com their own product. Is it helping or hurting them who knows. On the plus side they do show replays on a PPV basis generating some income where none previously existed in the off season.
-are NWMT races primarily a streaming product now? Tapley suggests they may be. Using the race at Loudon as a focal point the early start not as important since attendance has always been anemic at the track for Tour events. An interesting aside from the panel was that when races got moved up for good reasons they were generally viewed favorably something that appears to be the case at Loudon at least from the teams perspectives.
-Does race streaming serve any purpose in getting new fans to the track or is it always self defeating? The Sids View panel at various points took both sides on the issue providing anecdotes so color that one indeterminate.
-In terms of providing the greatest return is NASCAR’s decision to focus on streaming a good one or not if indeed that is what they’re doing? We just don’t know nor are we likely ever to know. It’s counter intuitive to deprioritize the whole reason for seeing races in person so then why would NASCAR do it? The obvious reason is they have information we that simply view butts in the seats don’t. Until we have access to the information all we’re doing is providing gut reactions based on incomplete information.
-Tipping point. Tapley thinks so though I couldn’t figure out exactly what he meant. My view every year is a tipping point for some tracks, promoters and streaming services since each situation is so unique. We know it’s still expanding as a whole. Some race streaming providers like Racing America showing up on packaged plans like DirectTV.
The above not strictly commentary by those in the Sids View podcast but filtered through my perspective. Listen and read the information in the links to get the opinions from the horses mouths so you can draw your own conclusion.