Rainout Policy Input
 

Leading into last nights races at Jacksonville Speedway, knowing that there was a chance we could have the dreaded mid-race downpour - I started thinking about a new way of handling mid-race rainouts that just seems more fair to everyone. Maybe it's done other places. Maybe there's a good reason for doing it the current way. But one thing I know is that the opinionated souls of IOW will give me their 2 cents...

Traditional rule is that we have this line in the sand that occurs when all preliminary races are complete and only features remain. If it rains during heat races/B-Mains, no matter how long people have sat and watched, the fans get a raincheck for the full amount of their ticket price (meaning they watched everything up to that point for free) and the racers go home empty handed with a rain check on their arm (meaning they aren't compensated for expenses of getting there and running heat races etc). Teams and fans that realistically can't make it back due to geography are probably refunded by contacting the track at most places.

When it rains after all of the heat races are complete, but prior to the main event being run it seems like the fans get the short end of the stick because we are keeping their money (no raincheck) and paying out the racers either by splitting the payout up somehow for a feature that hasn't run yet - or coming back to run double features on some night. BTW - Double features are a thing of the past until the tire shortage is resolved. No longer an option.

The opposite is true as well. When it rains after a bunch of entertaining heat races and B-Mains but before the feature the fans got the long end of the stick at the expense of the racers.

What if the policy was more reflective of the value received (by fans) and money spent (by teams) in getting to the point of the cancellation? I'm considering a new rainout policy that takes an equitable impartial look at the situation at the time of the rainout. Say in the scenario where fans have watched 2 great hours of racing of preliminary events but prior to the big event feature. Let's say the ticket price for this special was $20 and pit passes $30. I think it would be much more fair to take half of the purse and pay it out to the racers to compensate them for their time and expense, and then make the rainchecks worth half their paid value. So your rain check is now worth $10 toward a future event and your pit pass worth $15.

You sat there and watched 2 hours of entertainment. The racers spent money and fuel to get here and to provide that entertainment. What if we step across that line in the sand and split the difference between these two. The racers get paid a fair amount - and the fans paid a fair amount for what they saw.

And like any promoter I know... after we determine the fair split of how much to pay the racers and how much of your admission to use up (with 99% of the quiet fans probably agreeing with us) and you individually think you were ripped off in the process - I'll probably let you get your way and make you happy with a call that doesn't involve a butt chewing on social media.

The difference is that doing it the new way involves a judgement call not everyone will agree with - depending on what they were actually there to see. It's no longer a bright line. But to me it seems like both the racers and fans leave holding their appropriate amount of the stick.

Opinions?

Re: Rainout Policy Input
 

So are you saying and this is hypothetical, lets say if it rains at the end of the heats the fans get 50% back and the drivers get 50% of the posted purse, after B's fans get 25% back(of the ticket price) and drivers get 75%(of the posted purse) etc.? I'm not sure that you wouldnt be creating your own problem without some kind of line(s) in the sand so the fans understand what to expect. If for some reason it rained after the first of the B mains in 3 classes and you deemed that the program was 80% complete there might be some pushback. But in reality drawing multiple lines in the sand seems like a good idea from both a fan and driver point of view. If you want to get real technical about it you could divide the number of laps run by the number of laps scheduled to be run and give the drivers that percentage and give the fans the number of laps rained out divided by the total scheduled laps. Have I got anyone confused yet?

Re: Rainout Policy Input
 

Unfortunately we are in a rainy season. Of course we had five straight days of sun and 80 here leading up to Saturday (Rainy season)

I agree with your policy. I’m all for it. I always thought the old way wasn’t right.

Re: Rainout Policy Input
 

Yes (to the confused part). Seriously, that sounds like it might be a bit more fair, but I would lean toward something which is simpler and more easily understood by fans and teams. The last thing a promoter wants is to be entangled in multiple arguments from people who think they got the short end of the stick because they don't fully understand the process. I really compliment you on the thought you put in to this!!!

Re: Rainout Policy Input
 

Once again you have demonstrated why you stand out among promoters. I really congratulate you for even trying to make this a fairer deal for everyone. I have a dog in both fights (fan and team) and think your proposed solution works for both. There might be a little tweaking possible, but I favor something that is simple and easy to understand. You can pursue perfection 'till the cows come home and still not satisfy everyone. Thank you for even attempting to make things a little better for us all!!

Re: Rainout Policy Input
 

Manys a time after 4 heat races Ive thought to myself Ive all ready got my moneys worth but stayed for the rest of the show anyway. I left a number of rainouts a little disappointed like everyone else, have quite a few unredeemed ticketstubs misplaced around the house and Im still coming back for more. With a few tweeks as mentioned earlier it sounds like a fair deal and Im willing to do my part. Mr Dobson Thank you for your clear thinking and leadership

Best of luck with your new innovative Rain Out policy.

Re: Rainout Policy Input
 

Try it. I frequently find the heats to be the best part of the evening anyway.

Re: Rainout Policy Input
 

I guess I am old school, but I am not sure I would change the rain out policy. We all know that tracks run better when they are in hurry up mode because they have incentives to try to get the show in. I am not sure if your new policy will still incentivize the track to go into hurry up mode.

I also think that "most" of the people going to the races understands the rain out policy. I think the new policy will cause a lot of confusion and opinions on what is or is not a rain out.

Finally, I understand your point about double features with the supply chain issues, but traditionally, I have loved double feature nights. In fact, I would actively look for a track running double features as a track that I wanted to visit.

Re: Rainout Policy Input
 

I appreciate the thought of your idea, but here are a couple questions.

The Vast majority of the purse is paid out in the features as it should be, if the show cancels after the heats are you paying half the purse? It sounds like your keeping half the money.

Are you paying the raincheck back in money? Most of the tracks I go to just have you keep your ticket to be used at another date or have you mail it back to avoid the long exit lines in the rain.

If you going to let me reuse the ticket for a later date will it cause a hassle for your gate staff if my ticket is worth 50% of a regular week and the guy behind me has a ticket worth 75% of a regular show and the lady behind him has a ticket worth 50% of the USAC show because of all of the rain we have had this year?

Again, I appreciate forward thinking and I am just playing Devil's advocate here, not trying to argue. As far as I am concerned, I don't mind the way it is now. I was not in the least worried about going to Lawrenceburg Saturday because I knew that if we did get cancelled I would be able to use my ticket for the next race that I make down there. Usually if weather is in the area then the track tries to get the class I came to see in first so I don't have a lot of times that I felt like I got hosed.

Re: Rainout Policy Input
 

Thanks for the replies. While not responding (still dealing with paying out etc. from our rainout. Rainouts are headaches on a lot of fronts), I have been thinking through comments as I see them.

kb78 - to your point. It starts with the understanding that your ticket pays the racers' purse. This has to be clear to the fans. 9 times out of 10 what we take in from the front gate and pits gets paid back in purse to the teams and pay for our help. I think most tracks for regular shows are pretty close to this equation give or take far less than you might imagine. I've said before - we are in the food/drink business. The vast majority of the time our non-purse overhead gets paid from the concession end of the operation.

With that said, I don't think you are going to a track that BOTH pays the purse and gives you a rain check to use another day. Its an either/or. Either the purse got paid and you do not get a raincheck - or the purse didn't get paid and you (and the teams) have a rain check. At it's core, my thought is to not automatically pay the ENTIRE night's purse for features that don't get run and instead use the balance that wasn't paid to make a raincheck worth something. And to pay some purse even if the race hasn't reached the magical "preliminaries are over" stage and take a proportional amount off the value of your raincheck on account of you having sat and enjoyed racing for 2 hours.

This wouldn't happen often. But here's a scenario from my show last Friday. We had 5 classes of cars. Main class was a $2,500 to win Sprint show which was the third class of the night. We completed all heats, a midget feature, street stock feature and 11 laps (of 25 - not quite half way) of the Sprint feature when it rained. 305's and micro features were never run. Because we got 11 laps into the main event, I just used the old rule and paid the purse to everyone and no rainchecks were issued.

But - as that sprint feature was getting close and the rain was getting even closer - I was thinking about what would happen if it rained right before the sprint feature (main event) or even 2 or 3 laps into it. In that scenario - under the existing rule the night is complete. I pay all of the purse to the racers and the fans don't get a raincheck - even though they never saw any of the main event. That just doesn't seem entirely fair to the fans. They never saw the main thing they came to see - and in theory the Sprint teams didn't have the expense of running the feature.

I was thinking at the time of math like this. The entire night's purse was roughly 20k. I paid around 4k for the midget feature and 1,500 for the street stocks. So I still have roughly 3/4 of the event purse left to pay for features that won't be run ($15,000). What if I proportionately paid out about half of that or $7500 to the remaining 3 classes 6k to sprints, 1k to my 10 305's, and 1,500 to the 20 micros. And then made the rainchecks for the grandstands worth around $7-8 bucks and the pit pass raincheck worth about $12. I would have paid out about 2/3 of the night's purse and the rainchecks would be worth about 1/3 of the amount paid for them. In my mind the two sides of the equation (racers and fans) are meeting closer to the middle and nobody is single handedly taking it on the chin. Financially for the track it's all the same either way. I just seemed a little more fair than taking all of the fans money without having seen the main event. Fortunately the rain held off long enough to give them what I felt like was enough of the main event to justify the outcome of the "old rule".

Re: Rainout Policy Input
 

KD:

Back when I was a wee lad spending my Sunday nights at Springfield Speedway, Joe had a rainout policy that if 51% of the program (not features) including qualifying was completed, the program was complete and rainchecks would not be honored.

I was OK with that then, as now. As long as you tell me in advance, whether that be on the website, ticket, program or posted outside the ticket window, or PA announcement, I'm OK with your policy. At that point it is my decision to enter and if I take the chance knowing weather is an issue, that's on me. I have a choice, come back on the rain date or don't. It's the risk I take.

As a fan, what you do with the purse money beyond that point isn't my business. However, my experience with some sanctioning bodies is that if he features are set and rain comes, they split the purse equally among all the participants. I think that's a fair way of doing it and if you wanted to split it among everyone in the class, even though the feature might not be set, I think that's OK too.

Of course, over the last 50 years I've seen promoters who fart-assed around waiting for the rain, but that has NEVER been my experience with you or a couple others. I know you and your staff will do your best to get the show in, or cancel or postpone far ahead of time to save fans, teams and yourself the cost of travel and opening the plant.

Re: Rainout Policy Input
 

This was basically how Bob Bahre did things when I was growing up at Oxford Plains Speedway. If all the heats were done,and it started to rain,and it looked like it would rain for hours,they would call it. If it was more of a passing shower,they would dry the track which was pavement,and didnt take all that long to get ready for racing. If it rained out there would be double features the following week.

From memory the other tracks in Maine did the same sort of thing,so I've never thought to much about it. I've only asked for a refund once that I can remember,at Sharon when USAC got rained out there,and I wasnt going back for anything else on their schedule that I could apply the ticket to. From memory Gas City would hand you a refund if it rained. That was my Friday night choice for a long time,so I just reused the ticket the next week.

In todays world its easy to look at the weather radar and see if you want to chance it or not.

Good luck with whatever you decide. Always enjoy when you give us a perspective from "the other side" of the fence.....

Re: Rainout Policy Input
 

seems someone always feel cheated in a rainout regardless o the policy. Only once did a rainout cause me to have hard feelings toward a promoter. We drove over 3 hours to a non wing show at a track that runs late models normally.
The weather sudden went south and it started raining before the heats were even ran. I went to the track office and explained we lived over 3 hrs away and only came or the sprints.
They told me very hatefully they never refunded money under any circumstances and if I didn't want to come back for a weekly show I was out of luck..
I have had the same happen in Indiana, as soon as I said we were from Kansas City they gave us our money back with no hesitation.