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GURSS: Total Fan Experience
Written by: Jade Gurss   
07/27/2009
Mooresville, NC
 
It’s hard not to write about Juan Pablo Montoya or Felipe Massa this week – but by Tuesday, all that needs to be written has already been echoing across the internet for 24 hours or more. So let’s talk baseball.
Faster. Louder. The weekly column on SPEEDtv.com by Jade Gurss. (Harold Hinson Photo) ยป More Photos

Not really – but I did attend a major league baseball game last week, and it prompted me to compare how the fan experience related to the NASCAR Sprint Cup experience. It’s an economic reality that racetracks – whether it’s your local short track or the Cup superspeedway – have to compete with other sports and a wide array of entertainment options for the sparse family budgets. It proves essential if the experience at the track is a positive one for the entire family.

The ballgame was well attended despite featuring a home team in the midst of a brutal losing streak as the worst ball club in the league.
Yet, the crowd was clearly enjoying the overall experience (at least until the opposing team scored seven runs in the late innings) because of many stadium amenities such as beer gardens, playgrounds for the kids, a massive hi-def video screen which particularly shined between innings, and a constant stream of promotions and free items for the fans. It was a tight production – and nothing in racing comes close to the constant pageantry of a typical mid-week night at the ballpark even though baseball as a sport is slow and plodding.

Racing venues are at a disadvantage: races don’t have timeouts or innings, and thus no natural time other than pre-race to do similar things. Humpy Wheeler had the right idea at Charlotte: use the pre- race show to induce the crowd to arrive earlier, which means better traffic flow into the event and more sales at the concession stands.
Tracks with one or two Cup dates a year don’t have 80-plus games each season to amortize the cost of a giant scoreboard and video screens, but can use the sheer size of the venue to provide a pre-race that is memorable. As the sparse crowd for the Brickyard showed, even the most legendary speedway doesn’t assure a full grandstand.

A promoter I worked for talked about the “three T’s:” traffic, toilets and tickets. Do those three things well, and you can count on a certain number of happy customers. But the consumer these days demands those things and more.

Sunday’s Brickyard 400 took two hours and 41 minutes to complete – and again showed the need to shorten some of the 500-mile marathons that have little appeal for the generation being raised on three-minute videos on You Tube. Anything three hours or more becomes tedious for the fans in attendance or at home napping through the broadcast. With the points chase being so critical, most of the top teams cruise around the first eighty percent of most races, and then race like crazy in the final laps. By shortening the race, the cruising is reduced, and the show is better for the fans. If NASCAR wants to continue to expand their fan base beyond the diehards, shorter races are a must.

But, there are many things racing does
well in comparison to baseball.
Parking is free at most tracks, which compares with nine dollars to park in the far recesses of the sports complex. Many tracks also allow fans to bring in food, drink and small coolers – which is a great alternative to baseball’s $7.25 beer prices! In contrast to the per- game total for tickets, parking and food, NASCAR races are a pretty good bargain.

Another bonus point for racing is from the scanners and Sprint FanView units that offer an up-close experience by allowing fans to eavesdrop on the radio chatter. I know of no other sport that allows such access in the midst of the competition, and it adds immensely to the total experience. Can you imagine listening to the manager and pitcher as they meet on the mound? It doesn’t happen, but you can listen to your favorite driver and crew chief in the heat of battle.

I’m anxious to hear from readers – which tracks (local or national) do the best job of entertaining their fans and perform the “three T’s”
better than the rest? Which facilities are the worst- and are most likely to not see return customers the next time the circus comes to town? Why is one track better than another? Is it the quality of the racing or the quality of the overall experience?

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or Speed Channel

Jade Gurss is the owner of fingerprint, inc., a sports publicity company. He has written two New York Times Best Sellers, including what is believed to be the biggest-selling motorsports book in American publishing history (Driver #8 with Dale Earnhardt Jr.). His two decades of publicity and marketing experience involves nearly every category of motorsports, including nine innovative seasons as NASCAR publicist for the Budweiser brand and Earnhardt Jr. His blog can be seen at: http://fingerprint.typepad.com
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