Originally, I'd been flirting with something I haven't done in several years; a trip to one of the local race tracks. Those who don't follow auto racing (stock car racing, particularly) often don't realize that the big NASCAR shows aren't the be-all and end-all of stock car racing. (More accurately, they aren't aware of it, much as someone indifferent to baseball might not be aware that there's a middle ground between Little League and the major leagues.) Thanks to NASCAR's marketing approach, I'm not so sure a lot of casual new-age viewers realize there's a world of racing in their backyard. But it's there. On Friday and Saturday nights (and Sunday afternoons when the weather gets too cold...in October), or Thursdays if you live in northern Vermont, little quarter- and third-mile oval tracks put on their own racing shows. My grandfather used to pooh-pooh the short-track atmosphere as "where they race the jalopies," and while there are still entry-level classes with first-time racers running resurrected junkyard beaters, there are also prepared divisions shaking the grandstands every week.
In my neighborhood, there are a few options. Closer to the seacoast, there's Lee USA Speedway on Route 125, a third-mile oval. A little closer to Route 101 in Epping, there's a quarter-mile oval called All-Star Speedway. When my dad and I went, it was called Star Speedway, but the ownership of the track changed hands a few years back, in the midst of a track closing due to, shall we say, poor grounds conditions. We always considered ourselves fortunate that we didn't fall through the grandstands at least once. We were never weekly regulars, but we'd catch the special shows, when the regular weekly divisions were joined by the Busch North or the Featherlite Modified touring series. There are those who go weekly; they're mostly the diehards, rooting for someone they know or someone they've followed forever.
I can't be sure, but the last time I went to Lee might have been the Busch North opener in 2000. The series (and track) opener were held on a chilly Sunday in April, so after 2000, I couldn't be home for the opening race. Not long after that, my dad fell ill, and he can't negotiate those old-style wooden bleachers anymore. It's been a while. But I've wanted to get back to the track, maybe with someone who would enjoy it. I know drivers have come and gone, but it doesn't matter who's driving if the racing is good, right?
Last night was a special race at Lee, featuring the International SuperModified Association. The SuperModifieds are open-wheel cars, loud and light alcohol-burners with wings that zip around the track faster than a heavy stock car could dream of. The local tracks run so-called "small-block" SuperModifieds as a weekly division, but the touring ISMA cars are a bigger deal. I figured it would be a fun way to blow a Friday night.
Then I saw the ticket prices. $30 for an adult admission ticket. I'm no stranger to that; we used to pay $25-30 to go see the Busch North cars at Lee or Star. But that was a major NASCAR touring division, a 150-lap feature race plus all the local divisions. This was for a race half that length, plus the weekly stuff. If a ticket was closer to $20, I could have rationalized it; I think weekly admission is around $10 or $12. But $30 for an ISMA show seemed a bit steep. I talked to two of my co-workers Friday; both had considered going to Lee themselves, but the ticket prices were a turnoff for a short race.
The reasons for high ticket prices are many, and I could burn another blog post that'd be interesting to about three people considering the high price of motorsports, making up for lagging attendance and not being able to gouge the teams to pay their own purse, and so on. But especially in this economy, it seems like it would be better to charge a little less, and maybe entice more people to show up, than to turn people away. Friday-night racing isn't the only option out there. You can pick up good seats at a Fisher Cats minor-league baseball game for $15. An evening showing of a movie at a good theater is $10, and if you're up for a second-run flick, the Hooksett theater has prices lower than that. If you have a good stereo system and a nice TV, Redbox rentals are a buck a night. Or, if you're a nerd, you can get a venti Mocha Frappuccino (with whipped cream) for $5, and sit in an air-conditioned Starbucks for a couple hours slaving over your PowerBook.
The annual promoters' workshops in Daytona used to say the same thing; that you're competing against a lot of different options for entertainment dollars. It's even more important now, when people have less money to spend. Thirty dollars wouldn't have set me back too badly, but if I'd wanted to invite Jess and Mark (if they were here), they'd have passed at that price. My roommate Adam probably would have. I can't blame them. Hey, last weekend, after shopping and dinner, we retired to my apartment for hours of playing Rock Band 2 and the Forza demo. If you leave dinner out, and ignore the video games Adam bought on impulse, we had a pretty cheap night and still had a great time.
The same thing crossed my mind earlier this year, when the staff at Yankee Stadium decided to keep ticket prices in a sort of prestige bracket even though they weren't selling out games. Yes, I understand it's the Yankees. But wouldn't it be better to cut prices a bit, if it meant bringing in a few more butts to sit in the seats? People don't go to games alone. They bring friends, family, kids, so right off the bat, if you're selling one ticket, you're probably selling two. When we went to Loudon as a family, that was four tickets at nearly $90 a piece. That's a $360 day in tickets alone, never mind the other expenses of entertainment. A family can't do that more than once or twice a year. My parents rarely went to professional hockey games for that reason. A pair of good Bruins tickets could cost maybe $200, I have no idea what they were running at face value when my parents used to go. But for the same $200, you can get five pairs of minor-league tickets to see the Manchester Monarchs. The name's not the same, but the entertainment value certainly is. For that matter, a family can afford four tickets to see the Monarchs. And they can probably afford four tickets a few times a year, versus one special event. My dad got to enjoy ten or so Monarchs games last year.
You could say the same for concert tickets. I skipped out on the Fleetwood Mac show this spring, partly because I had no one to join me, but partly because the prices for good seats were a bit steep. I'm sure Fleetwood Mac was good, but not $90-100 good. Sure, I could have grabbed cheap seats somewhere, but I'm a bit of a seat snob. I admit that I did pay $190 to see The Eagles last year. Steep, but it was worth every penny, and I don't recall seeing many empty seats. I guess the best price is whatever the market will bear, and there are always plenty of wealthy parents to bankroll their kids' attendance at *NSYNC or Backstreet Boys or (more recently) Hannah Montana and Jonas Brothers concerts, but those are more the exception than the rule.
I guess someone has to have done the math, but from where I sit, without a sports-marketing background (but with two first-place trophies in some DECA roleplays on the subject!), it just seems like it'd be better to fill seats and earn on the volume than to gouge those who really, really, really want to go and leave those on the fence feeling like they're getting ripped off. Entertainment doesn't have to be a charity, but it doesn't have to be a luxury, either.
ISMA's supposed to be coming to All-Star Speedway in September. I wonder what ticket prices will be like for that show, though something tells me I'll be choosing Starbucks over All-Star.
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