I think people underestimate the value Flo has brought to our sport. Viewership of individual events has gone up significantly by bringing the possibility to watch every race to every fan. This adds value for sponsors of both the organizations and teams. More value means more investment.
I have mixed feelings about race tracks and promoters today. Some show up, unlock the gate and do nothing else. Then they complain that nobody shows up while packing the back gate with 5-6 classes and running to midnight. That is not "promotion." Nobody wants to sit at a race track for 6 hours watching classes they have no interest in. You need a short program of one or two classes and then give the customers more amenities. If people feel the value they will not only show up but also pay more to be there. I tend to love the tracks that add value and run a tight ship. Fortunately, there are still tracks out there doing just that! Make sure to support them!
Do I believe the tracks are getting a raw deal with Flo? Yes. How raw of a deal is the question. I don't know what Flo's overhead behind the scenes is but I can figure out the at the track production costs fairly close. The problem comes in figuring out Flo's income. At $149.99 annually per subscriber with access to all Flo content makes it difficult. USAC has 144,000+ followers on Facebook and 58,700 on Twitter and I'm sure most of those overlap. We can use Facebook's average conversion rate of 9.21% to make an educated guess of approximately 13,262 people. Subtract your overhead from there.
13,262 X $149.99 = $1,989,167/99 events = $20,092 per race in revenue for Flo with no rain outs.
I'm going to say production costs are around $2500 per race. By the time you pay the announcer, camera operators, gas and hotels and internet to upload the races. Plus add in the $1,000 per race to the tracks. Lets add an additional $500 for incidentals. So 99 races X $4000 expenses = $396,000 annual expenses at the track.
$1,989,167 - $396,000 = $1,593,167 left to pay for whatever Flo's behind the scenes expenses are. Now we would need to know what USAC receives from Flo for the rights to the broadcasts.
My disclaimer here is that these are all estimates. I don't know what the actual number of subscribers is and have no way to find out. Hope this gives people something to chew on.
Furthermore, the overall point fund for USAC’s National divisions now totals $320,000, an increase of 60 percent since the 2019 season.
The pay for USAC’s AMSOIL Sprint Car National champion has drastically risen to $50,000 to win in 2022 as part of a total point fund of $200,000. By comparison, the series’ point fund was $125,000 just two seasons ago in 2019.
The USAC NOS Energy Drink Midget National champion will now collect a $25,000 reward in 2022, as part of a point fund overhaul for the series, which has seen a three-year increase from $50,000 to $80,000 since 2019.
USAC Silver Crown’s champion in the coming year will take home $20,000 as part of an overall $40,000 point fund.
We can debate the plus’s and minuses. In the big picture my stance is we’re still pretty early in the whole streaming thing and that also applies to the distribution of revenue. This statement is absolutely my own take, but I can’t picture a scenario where either one intentionally hurts the other. I’m of the belief that things will be analyzed and adjustments made. I am however sure of a couple uncomfortable truths. The first one is, while many of us live and die for this wonderful sport we love, we overall are barely a niche. And secondly, when it comes even to dirt track racing, wingless is even a smaller slice of the pie
Which is why this "World on Inlaws" series scares Me..... non wing racing is really small. I have meet younger fans who did not even realize there was such a thing as Non Wing Sprint Car Racing!!!
that's crazy. Then back up 60 years when Sprints only ran on half miles..... you don't have to go back very far. I'm not going to drop names but I know a bunch of guys who are 70+ who raced..... they call everything in Indiana a "Midget Track"
Originally Posted by Hubie48:
"wingless is even a smaller slice of the pie"
Which is why this "World on Inlaws" series scares Me..... non wing racing is really small. I have meet younger fans who did not even realize there was such a thing as Non Wing Sprint Car Racing!!!
that's crazy. Then back up 60 years when Sprints only ran on half miles..... you don't have to go back very far. I'm not going to drop names but I know a bunch of guys who are 70+ who raced..... they call everything in Indiana a "Midget Track"
And our last half mile track is about go the way of the Buffalo.
With FLO being a privately held company you aren't going to see their financials. Unless someone in the know openly talks about it its very unlikely we will know their financials. Usually, the only way to see those numbers is if you sign a NDA and that's usually the prerequisite to some sort of bigger deal like a merger/acquisition. Then you are really not going to put it out to the public.
