What is Wrong With Brian France?

Again interesting. Source please.

 

The thing to keep in mind here is that the only teams who give a rat crap about selling merchandise are the big corporate ones. For the little guys - the Park Place / Black Swan / Core Auto / Michael Shank - sized teams - it's a money loser and a pain in the neck. For the big guns it's about name recognition and advertising. They don't care about making money on a t-shirt - they want the engagement and they want their shirts / flags /hats walking around the place and going home with the fans. Even IMSA themselves don't give a crap about the merchandise - as witnessed by the fact that their own store has been down for months.
As for the little guys - the track doesn't give a darn about the t-shirts and models that you can't buy anyplace else or the fact that you like actually buying it at the event not over the internet when you're back at home. They just want to be able to sell that space that normally goes for a couple of grand for a lot more to a big corporation and all the souvenir sales will then be through NASCAR's own vendor or through corporate branding tents who are paying through the nose.

 

Ummmm... that would be me. You can see my name on the post. ;-)

 

as I understand it, MSR uses the proceeds from their merchandise sales to fund team trips to strip clubs

 

Now that is a wise investment. Happy mechanics make for winning race cars. Not to mention you can now see how "airbags" are supposed to work!

 

Maybe... but Mike has told me personally that he loses money every time he has shirts made up.

 

I've lost money in strip clubs too

 

I was talking only about the Rolex 24 and IMSA merchandising. The NASCAR series is totally different with fans wearing head to toe team gear even when it features sponsors like Viagra and people buying up "limited edition" minute variations of the same model over and over. Hell, I knew someone who used to buy each new model 13 at a time - one for display and a case to put away to - he thought - pay for the kid's college. The IMSA series teams don't sell anywhere near enough merchandise to make it worth the trouble.

 

Don't think so. I don't hate. It is counter productive. I do know one thing...they are losing their audience and that will mean that profits are going to circle the bowl in time. I think with my head and look for only one thing...the ability to profit from it. I can't say the same for NASCAR. Pushing your fans away and losing the core audience is not a very good business decision in my opinion.

 

As someone who grew up in NASCAR country, here's my thoughts:
1. NASCAR forgot that the cars in many ways WERE the stars. Look at youtube of late 1980's NASCAR races. What the drivers were driving is obvious. Bill Elliott drove a Thunderbird and the car he drove LOOKED like a Thunderbird. Ditto Dale Sr.'s Monte Carlo, etc...etc...The cars today...who can tell because it's a spec series now. In sports car racing, the Ferraris are obvious, the Corvettes, the 911's....
2. NASCAR forgot that the sport was/is a Deep South sport. Leaving your core customer base (and selling the dates of tracks like Rockingham, N. Wilksboro) for Chicago/Miami/Las Vegas was great...for a few years. But that group of new customers, for whatever reason, did NOT latch on to the sport.
3. In the process of "cleaning up" the sport, all the personality was lost. The poster above is spot on. The sport was loaded with "personalities", and it prospered because of these guys. There was something quite "real" about those racers that is been homogenized out. The great Curtis Turner was once asked about the difference between understeer and oversteer. He replied: "That's easy: Understeer is when you hit the wall with the front end, oversteer is when you hit the wall with the back end".

Look at the 1988 Daytona 500 and you'll see what I mean about the cars:

 

Barton and all of you fine gentlemen, while I am no way qualified to contribute on the debate you are having the future of NASCAR - not that the lack of knowledge stops anyone these days. However I am familiar with the incident described above. It concerned Andrew Cotton, son of Michael, rather than his father. Here is what I wrote about it subsequently.

The miserable conditions continued, making everyone rather grumpy, just wishing for this damn race to be finished. Even at Corvette things got a little tense. Well known and sometimes respected writer, Andrew Cotton, popped his head into the Pratt & Miller pit to catch up with Andy Pilgrim and file some copy for the Daily Telegraph. There were a couple of off duty local cops acting “security” for Dale Senior and one decided that Andrew’s presence was superfluous and told him to get lost. Like any Brit abroad, Andrew ignored the cop and tried to help matters by declaring that he was not interested in Senior and only wanted to speak to Pilgrim. The next step was that Andrew was threatened with arrest if he did not leave immediately, a plain dereliction of duty. The cop should have tasered and cuffed him there and then for ignoring an instruction from an Officer of the Law. It would not have happened in Sheriff Bill Gillespie’s time.

Of course when this incident reached the ears of GM PR, they had a collective heart attack, but all was eventually smoothed over, the Telegraph got their copy and Andrew, I think, got a free breakfast.

In the unlikely event anyone wants to read the piece that this came from it can be found here

 

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You have NO idea how right you are on one part of this.

 

As someone who has dealt with the wrath of nascar, you are 100% right on EVERYTHING you stated.
I was in a position where I could have sued nascar several times over for copyright infringement - they used
several of my photographs in one of their annual publications, and had I known back then what I know now,
I SHOULD have sued them, but I didn't.
When I asked them for a VERY nominal fee for said pictures, I was sent a letter from nascar telling me I
would never be allowed at a nascar event ever again, would never be credentialed, all with NO payment.
Well, I went around this guy to someone MUCH higher up via a friend, and the higher up got me 'some'
money, enough for me to deem it wasn't worth it for me to pursue them, they'd just tie me up in court
forever, (but I still would have won - they printed my pics - that's all the evidence I needed).

Bernie learned everything he knows from Big Bill.

 

And why I don't follow the series much.
But, they don't care - they have made multi-multi millions, they don't give a damn about the fans or anyone else,
power and money rule - and they have all of the both of them in racing. All they have to do is make a couple of calls,
and no matter the track, series or sanctioning body, you can very easily be toast.
Why?
Because they have their fingers into EVERYTHING racing, no matter what it is.

 

Well, I see that Joey Logano is on "Fast & Loud" and Kurt Busch was on "Street Outlaws" - sounds like they are trying REAAAAAALLLLL hard to butter that toast!!!

Same **** with NASCAR that killed IndyCar that killed NHRA that (more or less) killed F1 - egos and *******s that have no idea WHY people watch racing and what makes it enjoyable for them. Right out of the gate, IT'S THE ****ING CARS STUPID!!! THE CARS, let me say it again - THE CARS, THE ****ING CARS. If they look like **** and all look the same, like a deformed lima bean - who the bloody ****ing hell cares???

Let me digress a little. Had a forum argument with some folks regarding college sports, where I stated that college sports is driven by schools that have natural "enemies" / rivals that people want to root for (or against). It drives the competition and fan base, and once you eliminate that, the interest goes away. College Football, as an example, is dying - even though people will tell you it isn't (it is) - because there aren't enough natural enemies to make it interesting. The top schools want all the money for themselves, so they've created this absolutely stupid "FBS" sub division that is supposed to be 130 schools, when in reality, it's more like 20. That's great for Alabama, Florida, LSU, etc., but really sucks for the rest of them. They will die off because it's an expensive sport to maintain at the collegiate level, and if you aren't at the top, you aren't getting big bowl money. UConn or Eastern Michigan are good examples of a program hemorrhaging because they can't keep pace and have NO NATURAL ENEMIES.

IndyCar - in their infinite wisdom - move to all Dallara cars, essentially a spec series. What complete bull ****. The cars look like crap, because I know I would much rather root for an armadillo than a jaguar. I'm sure a ton of badass dudes get tattoos of sloths and not lions or bears, right?

NHRA Pro Stock and Funny Cars look like humpbacked elephants...and forget 1/4 mile anymore, because it's much better to shorten the distance than slow the cars down. Gimme a break - what a dip **** maneuver by an amateur leadership team that basically tanked once Wally Parks died.

NASCAR - COT? I get the reasons why, but a complete aberration that ruined "STOCK CAR racing". Note the word "STOCK CAR". Are these "STOCK CARS"??? HELL NO!!! It's FAKE NEWS CARS! Even a blind man can see that ain't no Ford rubbin' paint with a Chevy (and we all know that RUBBIN' IS RACIN' - BOOGITY BOOGITY BOOGITY!)

NASCAR jumped the shark when Allison and Yarborough fought and they decided to become the WWE. I basically stopped watching soon after.

F1 is hovering close to the edge. The halo looks like a tacked on piece of ****. The engines suck (although I'm cool with turbos) and the whole electric / green nonsense has no place in racing - leave that to the idiot politicians. The cars have improved slightly but again with all the tacked on aero, they are starting to look weird again. LAME.

I don't look at Playboy to see fat chicks. I don't watch racing to see lima beans. Stop the madness.

 

Great post!

 

Yeah, when F1 got a Texas rainstorm they didn't go out either.

There is "rain", and then there is "RAIN".

 

All I can say is this....as a person that can actual build one of these cars from the ground up. I find that it simply has become an effort in market economics. Only a few can afford to play in a rigged game. How many watch bubble day as to pole day at Indy? How many great stories came out when the low budget team got in the show and made a decent run? Best story 1980. Sneva and Bettenhausen. 33rd and 32 to 2nd and 3rd. Little funds and a lot of heart. Now...if you can't drop a mil or two, you don't even get in the qualifying line. Tony Hulman had it right. The rest just cooked the goose. Now.....why bother.

 

I agree - the economics are driving it. There is a thread in Silver on soccer - in most countries, any team can compete in a league, the league does not own the team / club. If the club decides to spend big bucks, great. If they want to run on the cheap, that's great too. The reason is, there's a system of promotion / relegation. There is a top tier league, and a series of lower tiered leagues. If you are the bottom 3 of the top tier league, you get demoted to the lower tier league. Top 3 in a league, you get promoted (except in the top tier of course). It's up to the teams to decide their strategy, and it makes for compelling viewing. The battle to NOT get demoted is as good as the battle for first.

In America, our leagues are single entity - the leagues OWN the teams essentially. Any team with a perceived advantage is taxed or subject to a salary cap to ensure "parity". What a crock of ****. So now we get a whole bunch of .500 teams and a different winner every year - who the hell wants to see that??

I think racing has fallen prey to it. Damn the economics - if YOUR team wants to splurge MILLIONS of dollars to win - DO IT. But if I'm a shade tree mechanic and I want to run Indy, NHRA, whatever, I should be able to do it too. Meet safety regs for sure, but beyond that, allow it. Hell, ENCOURAGE it.

Stop with the boogity boogity boogity ******** and let's get some competition going. I seriously can't watch it anymore because everything is vanilla. Cars are the same, engines are the same, the racers are the same. It's CRAP.