Night NASCAR on a holiday weekend: A hit or a miss?

The comments from the uneducated posters here are a good indication of the attendance and why the 2 Atlanta races need to be moved to another venue. I haven’t seen the figures lately, but just a few years ago (4-6) the 2 races at Hampton (Atlanta Motor Speedway) generated more money for the metro Atlanta area than the COMBINED season totals of the Hawks, Falcons, and Braves. Yet the race gets little to no coverage from the local media and you still have idiots like Jim and Bat Masterson making their silly stereo typed comments.

Let’s not forget that Forbes magazine ranked the Daytona 500 4th in a list of the “most valuable” sporting events in the WORLD. IE: what generates the most money world wide. The superbowl was 1st, Summer Olympics 2nd, with World Cup Soccer (FIFA) coming in 3rd. No race from any other series makes the list. NASCAR has become the second most popular sport in the Country, (behind the NFL), but let’s continue to make mindless little snips at it Nativebird, that’s ok, the France family, who is making billions off it, don’t really care. You can pretend to be all cultured and wise by deriding NASCAR, but if you were as savvy as you pretend, you would have bought stock in the company when you had a chance. Those of us who did laugh all the way to the bank at every one of you wannabe pretentious snobs. Laugh all you want, I can’t hear you over the sound of the cash register. The sad thing is that Hampton (and metro Atlanta in general) haven’t even begun to cash in on the possibilities the 2 races in Hampton provide. Bruton Smith needs to send one race to Las Vegas and the other race to………….. hmmmmmm he has a lot of choices on the second one, any of them beat Atlanta, so that’s a tough call…………..

back to the question Mark asked: If the track had to depend on the Metro Atlanta area for ticket sales, I would say it will be a bomb. Since the rest of the world likes the track at Atlanta, I would say that there is a chance of it being a pretty decent payday. It’s a tough call to make since it will be the first Labor Day race in Atlanta and many fans had already made their race plans before the switch in dates was announced. Next years race will be a better indicator. No matter which way it goes, it will get more fans than it did when it was in California for those few sad years.

Oh and for you idiots with the tailgaiting in Athens comments? Hate to burst your bubble but the Dawgs are playing Oklahoma State in Stillwater OKLAHOMA. The NASCAR fans who are also Dawg fans that camp out at Atlanta will more than likely watch the game in the comfort of their air conditioned $100,000+ motorhomes on the 50 inch HD TV that they take with them. Although a good number of them also hook the TV up outside and share the game with their camping “neighbors” as well. Anyone at the track who wants to see the game will have no problem watching it before they go to their seats inside the track.

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Mark, some NASCAR fans would go to a race at midnight on Christmas eve if one was being run at that time. BTW attendance is down at the other tracks due to the economy. When (if) the economy impoves the seats will be filled again.

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I’m wondering what the attendance will be too. I’m thinking about getting tickets for the race because it’s Labor Day weekend, never been to a race at AMS, and never been to a night race. I agree with Fred in that it will take a few years to see what the attendance figures are before drawing a conclusion. Being a Dawg and NASCAR fan, I’ll watch the Dawgs on Saturday and either watch the race in person or on t.v. on Sunday. No big deal. For those of you who say the racing has become boring I agree to some extent. The COT has made side by side racing tougher with the 1 – 1 1/2 tracks. Does anyone remember the races at Daytona and the first race at Talladega this year? Were they boring? I was at the Talladega race and thought it was pretty exciting even without the final lap crash that took out Edwards and others.

Above all else I hope the switch to Labor Day is a success for ATL and AMS and I hope NASCAR continues to look at ways to better the racing and competition. Just my thoughts.

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Mark the $39 tckets and not good seats, ok but you get what you pay for. My 2 tickets were $242 in front of pits and finish line up top and covered in case of rain. There will be a concert before race also. What the He!! its only two times a year , Braves are out of it and Football…..its a long season.

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I liked it better when they had bush cars.

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Fred, I don’t buy your figures. And by the way, Freddy, why are you calling folks idiots? A little like calling the kettle black don’t ya think! You said: “Anyone at the track who wants to see the game will have no problem watching it before they go to their seats inside the track” That would be very true, especially since the race is the next day. Any REAL sports fan would know that, you moron.
From the Forbes article:
Our proprietary list of sporting event brand valuations was compiled by adding up television rights fees (or advertising revenues for events like Major League Baseball’s World Series, where the fee for the championship games is not broken out from the regular season or other postseason games), sponsorship revenue from signage inside the stadium, ticket receipts and licensing revenue. We then divided this amount by the number of days of competition. (Note: For the NCAA’s March Madness, we only considered revenues for the Final Four bracket, for comparability to championship series in other sports.)

Why is the Super Bowl so valuable? Commercial inventory for last year’s game on ABC–owned by the Walt Disney Co. (nyse: DIS – news – people )–amounted to $154 million, based on a record $2.5 million commercial rate for 30 seconds of airtime. Sprint Nextel (nyse: S – news – people ) paid $12 million to sponsor halftime, a figure that is expected to be topped by PepsiCo (nyse: PEP – news – people ) when the Colts play the Bears in Super Bowl XLI on Sunday.

The Super Bowl’s licensing program generated a record $140 million, with the largest share coming from Reebok, owned by German apparel maker Adidas (other-otc: ADDDY – news – people ). And thanks to an average ticket price of $613, gate receipts provided $31 million in revenue (net of the 25% of the tickets the NFL gives to the media, sponsors and league affiliates).

In terms of total revenue, next summer’s Olympics will rake in more than any other sporting event, $3 billion. The Beijing games will leverage their global audience with $1.7 billion from broadcasters, a record for the Olympics.

But because the Olympics cover 17 days, its brand value is $203 million less than the Super Bowl.

The International Olympic Committee is using the Summer Games’ popularity to enhance the value of the Winter Games, which are ranked seventh on our list with a value of $82 million. As part of the Olympic Committee’s international sponsorship program, all companies based outside of the host country must sponsor the Winter Games as a prerequisite to sponsoring the summer event two years later.
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Once considered almost exclusively a sport of the U.S. South, stock car racing has become the second most popular sport in the country. Worth $91 million, NASCAR’s Daytona 500 is our fourth most valuable brand.
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Last year’s race took home $47 million from broadcaster Fox, which is owned by News Corp. (nyse: NWS – news – people ) Despite the lack of a truly international audience, NASCAR’s top race garners four times the revenue of rival Formula 1’s fabled Monaco Grand Prix.

Perhaps the biggest surprise on our list is an annual college football game. The Rose Bowl Game ranked No. 5, ahead of the NCAA Men’s Final Four, the World Series and the NBA finals, with a value of $88 million.

The Rose Bowl is traditionally a contest where the Big 10 and Pac 10 champions battle it out, and its value is due in large part to its eight-year, $300 million contract with ABC. Even though sportscaster Keith Jackson, who became a legend with his famous play-by-play of the Rose Bowl, has retired, the game still remains the granddaddy of all college bowl games.

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I love Nascar but I love Braves baseball, UGA football,and Falcons football more (not in that order). However, the fact that the race is on Sunday night is perfect for this Labor Day Weekend and Labor Day Weekends to come. UGA plays on Saturday afternoon and the Falcons don’t start the season until the following week.

I’m going to the Braves game that Friday, UGA on Saturday, NASCAR under the lights in Hampton on Sunday. It doesn’t get any better than that.

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they ought to call it the Macon race. That track is nowhere near Atlanta.

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