Growing the Sport

[14J]

One more thought………………..

Obviously I’m bored today


Without going into to much detail I think kneel down racing needs to take one of two roads. This will require us defining ourselves. Who are we?

A. A plan to revitalize local racing.
B. A plan of consolidation where we can go out nationally and offer a tight and marketable program to sponsors.

I’m not sure you can or need to do both. In regards to plan “B” I think we can entice new participants and require of them national or regional travel if they get something out of it (water time, awards, a purse, etc)

Alright let me get back to work.

[BP125V]

Instant death

One more thought………………..

Obviously I’m bored today


Without going into to much detail I think kneel down racing needs to take one of two roads. This will require us defining ourselves. Who are we?

A. A plan to revitalize local racing.
B. A plan of consolidation where we can go out nationally and offer a tight and marketable program to sponsors.

I’m not sure you can or need to do both. In regards to plan “B” I think we can entice new participants and require of them national or regional travel if they get something out of it (water time, awards, a purse, etc)

Alright let me get back to work.

Paln B would kill the sport completely in two years. The reason why there is still racing today is because we have the residual of what was once a MONSTER local sport. Multiple clubs in each state, races every weekend, minimal travel. Look at the Merc Challenge as an example. A small set of hard core drivers will travel every weekend leaving the rest at home. Pretty soon even the hardcore get tired of driving and they stop going. We have a hard enough time now attracting new members with a 2 hour drive to races, no way in the world should we change things so you have to go further.

Don't get me wrong here, S.O. has been my life, nothing I'd rather do. But we are not capable of putting on the show that the USTS or OPC guys are. We are a small time, relatively low cost (included the word "relatively" for you Don ) family based sport that is a lot of fun. Even under the best of cir***stances ie good water and a lot of entries, we are not going to attract large major sponsors.

The only way to grow the sport is to grow it at the local level.

Bill III

[wagner-racing16-s]

right now i have beem talking to my employer about sponsership of a race somewhere in upperstate ohio and they like the idea but haven't gave me an answer i am working hard with them to get it. And they are a mainstream corp. something i can see turning into a big event possibly every year.

[csh2z]

Bill III

You're on the right track.
Off to Whitney Pt. John 2-Z

[mercguy]

I am in sales and sell for a living. I have a commission plan that has incentives for meeting goals. I have thought we could do something similar in S.O. For example, any club who can get five brand new members to race and join APBA in a season gets one free sanction. We can take the money from the S.O. promotional fund. The five new member’s dues over a few season pay's the money back. Ed took the first step and challenged the commission. Lets take another step and put a goal out for clubs and reward them for making it. Maybe then a struggling club is able to put on another race which also seems to grow membership. It may make our club meetings more meaningful. Instead of sitting around reliving the good old days we set strategy for getting five new members.

Set a goal at the club level and reward them for meeting it! Pay for performance, this would be the most direct use of the S.O. promotional fund.

Another idea, if you bring in a new member your APBA membership fees are waived for that year. This one would take more organization and possible begging with APBA but if you add one and waive one APBA is not losing any $. Furthermore, the next year they have truly increased $ by one membership.

Set goals and rewards that drive the sales team to get new members. This would be more effective, in my opinion, than spending that money on advertising. We are the sales team; now give us the commission plan. Evaluate it after a year and tweak it to drive the goals.

Just a ranting idea that I have had for a while....

I also brought up the idea of APBA offering a discount towards a membership renewal if a new racer was brought onboard by the "renewalee".........

[14J]

Paln B would kill the sport completely in two years. The reason why there is still racing today is because we have the residual of what was once a MONSTER local sport. Multiple clubs in each state, races every weekend, minimal travel. Look at the Merc Challenge as an example. A small set of hard core drivers will travel every weekend leaving the rest at home. Pretty soon even the hardcore get tired of driving and they stop going. We have a hard enough time now attracting new members with a 2 hour drive to races, no way in the world should we change things so you have to go further.

Don't get me wrong here, S.O. has been my life, nothing I'd rather do. But we are not capable of putting on the show that the USTS or OPC guys are. We are a small time, relatively low cost (included the word "relatively" for you Don ) family based sport that is a lot of fun. Even under the best of cir***stances ie good water and a lot of entries, we are not going to attract large major sponsors.

The only way to grow the sport is to grow it at the local level.

Bill III

Bill-

Fair enough. I still think we're selling ourselves short if we continue to think of ourselves as "small time". To think we can't attract a higher level of sponsorship is foolish. Maybe I'm ambitious in this regard. I do think we can put on a show similair to the USTS and it can be done on a regional and local level. The people and product are not much different from us.

"Local" can still be produced professionally.

I'll buy into the importance of local growth. The "Merc Challenge" example is accurate and not one I had thought of. Where I was headed is that if we continue to do nothing to foster local growth than we better start thinking of ourselves in a different way. At the moment we are very close to being a national sport. We'll at least regional, certainly not local. I've averaged nearly a 5 hour drive to each race this year (John Runne would laugh at this ). That's certainly not a local sport.

Hopefully this years winter discussions will facilitate workable plans. I think most racers would be more than happy to do the work of implementation if they were given something to work with.

Troy Gladkowski

[14J]

Paln B would kill the sport completely in two years. The reason why there is still racing today is because we have the residual of what was once a MONSTER local sport. Multiple clubs in each state, races every weekend, minimal travel. Look at the Merc Challenge as an example. A small set of hard core drivers will travel every weekend leaving the rest at home. Pretty soon even the hardcore get tired of driving and they stop going. We have a hard enough time now attracting new members with a 2 hour drive to races, no way in the world should we change things so you have to go further.

Don't get me wrong here, S.O. has been my life, nothing I'd rather do. But we are not capable of putting on the show that the USTS or OPC guys are. We are a small time, relatively low cost (included the word "relatively" for you Don ) family based sport that is a lot of fun. Even under the best of cir***stances ie good water and a lot of entries, we are not going to attract large major sponsors.

The only way to grow the sport is to grow it at the local level.

Bill III

Bill-

You've pointed out a few things that I'd like to expand on.

One challenge for the "local" approach is we're not all that inexpensive. Not as we live today. There is a great deal of travel expense if you hit 10-20 races during the year. Secondly, in order for one to enjoy more than 10 minutes of water time over the weekend you need to run 2,3, maybe 4 classes. This obviously gets expensive. It doesn't work like this in any other form of motorsport. I don't think we offer much "Bang for the Buck". We have the product to do so but the format is wrong.

It sickens me when I sit around for 6 hours each day and watch a schedule filled with three boat classes. For what? Entry fees? We don't want to piss off two or three guys? For the local club it may be financially necessary but as a sport it will hurt our long range plan.

Let's stop diluting the driver pool, put a marketable program together, and only than will we be able to sell the sport locally.

[Abbott Racing]

If you look through the archives of this website you will find lots of posts on reducing the number of classes, combining classes etc....

The race I ran a few weeks ago, combined as many classes as possible that were less than 5 boats. In one instance we had 2 classes that fielded 11 or 12 boats on the water which got everyone on the shore and in the pits watching. Everywhere you looked on the course there was a race going on. My son and I did patrol boat duty at another race this summer and almost the entire flight was made up of 3 boat heats. The owner of the pontoon boat that we were on looked at me an said "no offence but this is pretty boring".

The more boats we put on the water at once, the better a show. I personally would love to see us go to an "J", "A", "B", "C", "D" and perhaps "E" format. the classes would be open to multiple engines and could potentially have lots of boats.

[Richard K.C. Mo.]

Bang for Buck!

If you look through the archives of this website you will find lots of posts on reducing the number of classes, combining classes etc....

The race I ran a few weeks ago, combined as many classes as possible that were less than 5 boats. In one instance we had 2 classes that fielded 11 or 12 boats on the water which got everyone on the shore and in the pits watching. Everywhere you looked on the course there was a race going on. My son and I did patrol boat duty at another race this summer and almost the entire flight was made up of 3 boat heats. The owner of the pontoon boat that we were on looked at me an said "no offence but this is pretty boring".

The more boats we put on the water at once, the better a show. I personally would love to see us go to an "J", "A", "B", "C", "D" and perhaps "E" format. the classes would be open to multiple engines and could potentially have lots of boats.

NBRA has some races in OK. and Ark. that they have what they call the OK. format when not too many boats are there.
I haven't been to one yet , but everyone runs like 4 heats in thier class.
I'm sure some one on here can explain it better. As a spectator sounds good to me.
RichardF