Attendance for this year’s Daytona 200, like every year, was crap. I might have been able to start a flag football team with the amount people in the stands. This is one place where the AMA bites it hard. They should try and get off the self righteous AMA bandwagon and make the races about the racers, and not the oh so mighty AMA. Nobody outside of racing knows who Jason DiSalvo is because the AMA doesn’t tell any story. He’s a racer for the AMA. That’s it? Awesome.
Do you think that all of the Podunk NASCAR fans really give a crap about racing cars in a circle? Not bloody likely. They love the racers. NASCAR does a great job of telling a story. Dale Jr. sucks the big one, but he sells tickets. He does wrangler commercials. All American good ol boy with racing royalty in his veins; even though he should be selling wranglers at Wal-Mart instead of endorsing them.
You mean to tell me that James Rispoli, one of the most promising prospects in supersport, couldn’t be a huge success if the AMA actually put the effort into making a story about his life, selling the sizzle? AMA wake up and smell the rubber burning in your office. Dear marketing team, when Josh Hayes can walk into a crowd of people and no one asks for an autograph, your marketing plan might need a little tweaking.
Let’s get back to the drawing board and off the soapbox. Let’s tell a story... tell the public who the racers are. They have trials and tribulations, just like everybody else. And the public should know what a struggle it is for a racer to get out and ride every race. The pressure to win, get funded, and not wreck. Please the sponsors, keep the logistics going, and don’t piss anybody off. You gotta love pretentious team owners with a hard-on for being in the limelight. Oh yeah, and don’t forget all the bullshit that comes along with the AMA.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to slam the AMA, even though this story really seems to be doing that quite well. I know alot of the people that work for the AMA, and they're great people, but, when there are 500,000 people outside the speedway and 15,000 inside, somebody in that organization needs to take a look at what's important. More fans=More Money...you guys like money, right?
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I'm not saying it's NOT the AMA's responsibility to do race marketing - it is - but there are a lot of race teams out there making zero effort to get news out.
But it's not just small-budget AMA teams. All the way up to the GP level, there are teams doing a miserable job of PR.
Again, I'm not defending the AMA's terrible PR record; the AMA needs to re-examine the way it approaches racing public relations, but the teams need to step up and understand that if they're not promoting themselves, no one will.
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