part of the NASCAR family, sat down for a question-and-
answer session about the series and its future which has been the subject of some peripheral conjecture.
Question: To paraphrase Mark Twain, are reports of the series' demise greatly exaggerated?
Answer: Yes they are.
Q: Given the state of the economy, on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you assess the financial health of your series and your outlook for 2010?
A: I would say, frankly, we're looking at this as a great opportunity. I don't know that I can give you a number as much as I would give you the probably the same number a year ago.
For one thing, the worldwide recession, depression, contraction, whatever you want to call it, probably comes to motorsports a little bit later. And I think we're in a unique situation as compared to our big brother (NASCAR) . . . in that most of our facilities are park-like. If you go back at look at the depression in the (19)30s, the movie industry did very well because people still wanted entertainment. Today we have entertainment at home, we don't have to go outside. But for those families that want to go out and spend a weekend doing something inexpensively, our park-like facilities now offer a real bargain, and the smart promoters we have our offering that and promoting that this is a family activity.
I think this is going to be a time of growth for our sport. What we see in our own business is that our entries are down a little bit, but if you look at our TV broadcasts, all of the usual suspects are still on camera running for the win. Our TV numbers in terms of ratings are up. Our spectator counts are all up, too. Every single event this year has seen a significant increase. Now we don't know whether that's because of the curiosity factor of the NASCAR name or if that's because our marketing efforts have finally matured and caught hold or if it's because of family atmosphere in a park-like setting. I'm not sure but we'll take it.
