I agree 100% about advertising. Even if it is just radio ads, it is better then nothing. TV is where advertising needs to be though.

---------- Post added at 05:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:28 PM ----------


I made the mistake of sitting in the turn 3 stand last year at the opener during hotlaps. After about 30 seconds into hotlaps, I moved over to the Section A crowd. I figured I could stand a little bit of the hooligans over being a mud shower.

I took a long time friend of mine and his grandson to their first Sprint Car Race ever last year at Kokomo.
They were so Impressed that they have been to Kokomo and Gas City more times than I have been this year.
They couldnt believe that it is the same size track that the grandson runs on at school,and there are 24 open wheel race cars on it.
Until I took them they thought that Sprint Cars were what races indoors
in the winter on 1/10 tracks.
They are fans for life.............I have been for 50 years..

Your going to have a lot more sucess getting people from more than a 20 mile radius of the track by simply giving away a thousand tickets to a church/Company, Getting them there once and having five or ten people become regular paying customers than spending thousands on TV ads that most of them have no clue as to what happens at the track, They see Monster Trucks on TV. They see Motocross.

Radio and TV ads are only going to reach those who probably already know about it, At best it will bring it to their attention if they didn't know it was coming up.

Sprint Week on the other hand is a totally different sujbect all together. For the first time we are getting to a point of, CAN THE FACILITY HANDLE IT?. Its all years of hard work from everybody ever involved in ISW, I remember sprint weeks with 65 cars in the pits and only 1000 paying fans at the events SPrint weeks that had 3000 up top of the purse and third paid 500 and 150 for last.

Those who came told/brought others, Im proud to be part of that for over 20 years as a paying customer, I seen some great events and racing over the years. I think the one that sticks out in my mind was DD splitting two TSR cars on the final lap of the final corner of a very foggy LPS for the win I also remember Jay drake doing the same thing at Burg a few years ago. Just awesome!

I've found that tracks that do a very timely press release story on the race, regardless of how short, and sends it out to local and state newspapers helps quite a lot too. As a sports editor, I started covering Lincoln Park Speedway a number of years ago and writing the weekly story and sending out photos with that release to national racing websites as well as a number of central Indiana newspapers. Some only use the results, some use both the photos and story, but I've heard a lot of fans at the track comment on the stories in the paper or on our website so every little bit of publicity helps. I know from an editor's standpoint, the summer is slow for local sports news and I'm sure there are a lot of papers around some of these tracks that are the same way and I appreciate every little bit I get that's already put together in a nice package to put in my paper. The art/photos are a big bonus too because those are what really draw the average readers' eye.

Just a thought, but if more tracks sent out a press release via email to some of the bigger papers that hopefully they will start printing them in the daily papers rather than just racing specific venues. As far as most professional sports go these days, dirt track racing is about as affordable as it gets for the average person. I attended a St. Louis Cardinals vs. Cincinnati Reds game at the new park in St. Louis a couple months ago and had free tickets from a friend, but two beers, two mixed drinks, nachos and I believe a hotdog or burger was nearly $70 and that's just damn ridiculous. If I wouldn't have had free tickets, the whole thing would have cost about as much as a plane ticket to Florida!!

700 W.L.W. is a very smart move as it can be picked up all over the place, people from several states away can pick up the broadcast. They have a very large following and no doubt in my mind some of your crowd came from the advertising on there station.

Jerry #66j
stida.com

Jerry you are right on the money about 700 WLW. I live 50 miles north of Milwaukee and during the day it doesn't come in very good but in the early evening hours i turn it on sometimes and it comes in just as clear as the Milwaukee stations.

WLW must be on for a long time, there isn't many stations with only three call letters. It also must be AM station if it has that much of a reach.

I helped my friend take his sprint car to a local cruise night & we got plenty of attention. Lots of people asking questions most were what is it? When we explained what it was, how much HP & weight their jaw dropped. You gotta be kidding me, they were in awe. Next questions was where do we race? Followed by a we'll be there man I gotta see this. So maybe some promotor could give a racer a couple pit passes for doing a cruise night. Take a generator play some tapes, the Slashmeister rules here, right Jack. lol. It's fun we had a good time, we set kids in the car all night long. Go ahead it'll do you some good, we may have picked up a couple sponsors too.