RENO (Dec. 4/5) – The annual western meeting of the 42nd annual RPM Workshops visited the Eldorado Hotel and Casino. The Work Shop brings short track promoters from across the country for two days in intensive seminars and meetings.
The RPM Workshop began with Stewart Doty welcoming all the promoters to the meetings.
Mark Gundrum spoke about the Necessary Evils of marketing and PR to help short tracks.
John Gartner went over how important trained and capable officials are to any race track.
One panel at the work shop was composed of Nadine Strauss, Judi Madden and Linda Manning. They gave the women’s perspective on the challenges faced in running a short track or series.
Jeff Stephens and Bob Strauss (Nadine Strauss not shown.) were promoting their new series, the North State Modified Tour.
Davey Hamilton was on hand talking with owners about his new King of the Wing series he’s helping promote.
Amont the vendors that focus on short tracks was Race Track Wholesale. This firm supplies all kinds of things fans at a track might want to buy like caps, and other things.
Those attendees that arrived on Wednesday and registered for the RPM Workshop were treated to a gathering at Harrah’s National Automobile Museum. Providing transportation and food was the Eldorado Hotel and Casino.
This year RPM boss Stewart Doty was assisted by Nadine Strauss, who used to promote Lakeport Speedway with her husband and now is involved with the North State Modified Tour.
The workshop actually began Wednesday evening with a visit to the Harrah’s National Auto Museum catered by the Eldorado.
On Thursday the meetings began with Doty welcoming everyone, complimenting the staff and hosts at the hotel as well as thanking long time sponsors of the workshops.
In his opening statements Doty said, “The tradition is a cooperative effort of promoters helping promoters and you’re surrounded by people that operate race tracks just like yours,” Doty said. “I encourage you to network this week as you’ll get the best ideas in lobbies, lunch and in the Casino. Then you can use those contacts you met here to form a network so you share ideas from this session.”
Then, after identifying promoters new to the workshop he encouraged everyone in the room to get up and introduce themselves to other promoters. After that it was time for business.
The industry itself, due to changing economic times, is going through changes, as there’s a shift away from weekly racing to having breaks in a track’s schedule. While this is new in some areas, short tracks in this region have actually been doing this for a number of years.
One area focused on was the PR and marketing, or the lack of. And how this is hurting track’s bottom lines.
Mark Gundrum, from the ARCA series, and a promoter himself, gave a speech entitled, “The Necessary Evils of PR, Advertising, Sales and Marketing.” There was also a handout that accompanied this talk.
“The necessary evils are those elements that take a lot of planning and a lot of work. If we take an overlook at history from 1998 when everything was good now we find car counts and fan counts are down everywhere,” he said. “Have to ask what’s wrong and how do we fix it.”
Later he cited a survey that less than 50% of promoters have a PR person and told everyone if they aren’t doing a good job to admit it.
“We need to identify strengths and weaknesses and probably, most important, to be committed. Its not easy but smart people know what they don’t know,” he said. “The heart and soul of your business is marketing.”
Then he went through many tips and suggestions on how to turn things around. And how public relations and media relations are very different.
Next up was Roger Hadan, the 38th Auto Racing Promoter of the Year, who runs Eagle Raceway. His topic was, “We’re here to have fun.”
In his speech he related some of the zany things he does to entertain the fans that come to his races and how they are always thinking up new things.
He also uses a lot of free tickets given out to the drivers as a way to fill his stands knowing that his concessions will reap the rewards of so many at the track.
And his daughter followed up with suggestions on how to use social media to help bring fans into the facility.
After lunch Doty commented and named promoters that have been lost to their passing and asked for a moment of silence to honor them.
Next up was Chico promoter Dennis Gage and Ron Bennett from Holland Motorsports Complex. Their topic was, “Is Our Business Model Broken?”
Both men spoke about how they’ve made adjustments from giving various classes a weekend or two off and even not running when it was too hot. Gage borrowed the phrase from another track that called it a “heat out.”
Bennet said, “What we were doing was presenting a good program but it’s not working any more. We need to make it fun and fun is what it’s all about. You don’t have the hardcore fans anymore so when you come out with a new schedule you’ll be addressing news fans and we’re finding out rotating classes works well.”
Gage noted they now have a purse based on the car counts and is trying other things like paint ball and mudder events to help his bottom line.
The Workshops has a small trade show of companies that have always supported these meetings. However some vendors that attended previous workshops weren’t present due to economic problems.
One vendor, Jay Simes had a novel way to promote his graphic arts business as he wrapped his catalogue in a new magazine called Short Track Race Promoter.
For some attendees it’s a time to do business with promoters and vendors. Tom Deery, the World of Outlaws boss, was there talking with various promoters and vendors and he also released the 2015 Outlaws schedule.
Former Indy Car driver and team owner Davey Hamilton, who was promoting the pavement sprint car series King of the Wing, was also talking to various vendors. Currently the series runs in the Midwest and West but plans on expanding to Florida and into the Northeast.
Hamilton, who used to race sprint cars at Carson City, explained how he’s done much research so the series could run three different motors that were made very equal with the proper restrictor plate.
MAVTV will broadcast the three western races starting on the 18th of this month.
Another two series promoters were Bob Strauss and Jeff Stephens, who have formed the North State Modified Tour that stages races on California paved tracks.
Asked how it got started Strauss said, “Jeff had approached me a long time ago but I didn’t think the timing was right as long as the race tracks could support their own modified classes. Then in our area when the race tracks were starting to get down to four or five cars or even less at some of them we thought maybe the timing was really right.”
He added that Jeff has experience with owning racecars, had connections with Lucas Oil and Jeff Scheideker.
“Basically it seemed to me that the racing mentality changed. Back when we raced we used to race 20 to 24 points races, the new racers coming up, they want to do other things. So we kind of went on a one big show a month or one big show every three week,” Stephens said.
The decision was to have one big show and they seemed to like it. This past season was the tour’s first and they staged six races.
Strauss said they started at Shasta Speedway with 12 or 13 cars and as the season progress that build up to around 24 cars.
“Now that the ball is rolling it seems there are a lot more people that want to get involved,” Strauss said, “I think we wouldn’t be too crazy if we said we’ll see 30 or more cars at some of our events, hopefully all of them.”
In 2015 want to try for nine or 10 races but don’t want to have races closer than three weeks apart. They are encouraged, as they’ve gotten a good response from the drivers.
“I think it grew beyond our expectations last year and we seem to be on everyone’s radar this year,” Stephens said. “And Greg Scheideker has been a big help.”
Then Strauss said, “The amount of success we had for just a start up and the fact we grew at such a rapid rate and it definitely seems very positive.”
Strauss and his wife Nadine are former Auto Racing Promoters of the Year and ran Lakeport Speedway for many years. And Stevens added they’ve been getting requests from tracks to bring the series to other facilities.
As usual for both days there was a lot of interaction between vendors, insurance companies, graphic arts, transponders, those that supply tickets and even one that will custom design a website for tracks.
After lunch Doty asked for a few moments of silence for the promoters and supports of the workshop and racing in general that have passed away.
Next came promoters Dennis Gage from Chico and Ron Bennett from Holland Motorsports Complex, discussing and fielding questions on the subject, “Is Our Business Model Broken.”
After that the next two sessions focused on the legal challenges and aspects or running a short track. This was followed up by a presentation on how the crate motor program is going and a panel discussing challenges every new promoter has or will face.
Finally Thursday’s session ended with three new promoters, that were former race drivers, discussion the challenges they faced as new promoters and how they overcame or are working on them.
On Friday the session began with John Gartner going over how to pick, train and what to expect from the track officials. He also included a pretty detailed hand out.
This was followed by a panel of women giving their views on what it’s like to operate in the male dominated world of track and series promoters. The panel consisted of Nadine Strauss from the North State Modified Tour, Judi Madden from American Valley Speedway and Linda Manning from Bay Cities Racing Association.
After opening statements they fielded questions from various promoters.
The workshop ended with three sessions covering publicity, the implication of the trends affecting the industry and how Social Media can help or hinder a facility. And the final session focused on how social media is changing the face of the industry.
Earlier in the session Doty stated the objectives of the workshop to help tracks improve their operations, change with the times and refill their stands.
And on the final day he said, “We’ve had a great audience, we’ve had good speakers, everybody that helps me produce the meeting at the Eldorado Hotel has done a great job.”
Then he continued, “If there is a trend out there it might be moving from 16 to 20 quote, unquote regular shows to more of a mixed schedule that gave entrants and fans with weeks off with the substitutions of other events either motorsports or non motorsports. It’s a bad time for motorsports, from top to bottom everybody is having a hard time with ratings problems and all of that stuff.
“You know there is still a half million people out there that want to race and they need a place to race. The only thing is these people need to find ways to do that profitability so they can sustain their facilities. It’s not going to be quick it’s going to take us a while to figure out what it needs.”
This weekend the Workshop heads for Indianapolis for a one-day meeting then will host another two-day event during Speed Weeks at Daytona.
