Nascar cuts race purses 10%

[Jonesi]

A 10 percent pay cut? Welcome to the club
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/blog/...e=blount_terry

[Mark in Oshawa]

Jonesi, I read that and I see now that the track owners cutting their ticket costs to get more people into the track just was repaid by taking it out of the teams/driver's pockets. Bruton and ISC are not going to take a hit on their bottom line if they can screw over the teams and this looks like what they have done.

I don't think the teams will feel it in the way we all think, but maybe it may push a few weaker teams into starting and parking, or maybe it just made starting and parking almost unfeasible.

I don't like it....ISC and Bruton Smith I am sure could have rode out this spell in the economy without a drastic 10% cut....

[call_me_andrew]

I was just about to post this story from Yahoo.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100129/...r_track_relief

This is the part that blew my mind: "High-profile tracks like Daytona, Texas and Indianapolis pay a much higher sanctioning fee to NASCAR than smaller venues like Dover, Darlington and Martinsville — and the purses reflect that."

I figured NASCAR and ISC had some kind of sweetheart deal where the Daytona 500's sanctioning fee is $1.

And then this article shines a little more light onto the subject

http://www.scenedaily.com/news/artic...pulations.html

[Jonesi]

I was just about to post this story from Yahoo.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100129/...r_track_relief

This is the part that blew my mind: "High-profile tracks like Daytona, Texas and Indianapolis pay a much higher sanctioning fee to NASCAR than smaller venues like Dover, Darlington and Martinsville — and the purses reflect that."

I figured NASCAR and ISC had some kind of sweetheart deal where the Daytona 500's sanctioning fee is $1.

And then this article shines a little more light onto the subject

http://www.scenedaily.com/news/artic...pulations.html

Those numbers jive with what I've seen. About $2.5-3mil of the purse is TV money. Although the money is going in different directions, Nascar sanction fee is about what the purse is. Which means the sanction fee for D500 is well over $10mil.

[Lee Roy]

I was just about to post this story from Yahoo.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100129/...r_track_relief

This is the part that blew my mind: "High-profile tracks like Daytona, Texas and Indianapolis pay a much higher sanctioning fee to NASCAR than smaller venues like Dover, Darlington and Martinsville — and the purses reflect that."

I figured NASCAR and ISC had some kind of sweetheart deal where the Daytona 500's sanctioning fee is $1.

And then this article shines a little more light onto the subject

http://www.scenedaily.com/news/artic...pulations.html

Hey, at ISC tracks it's mostly going from one France Family pocket to the other. It's best to keep the books straight.

[Lee Roy]

Great article on the purse reduction issue by a highly regarded (by me anyway) motorsports journalist. Takes ISC and SMI to task with some pretty interesting financial data.

http://nascar.speedtv.com/article/cu...nascar-tracks/

[Mark in Oshawa]

Great article on the purse reduction issue by a highly regarded (by me anyway) motorsports journalist. Takes ISC and SMI to task with some pretty interesting financial data.

http://nascar.speedtv.com/article/cu...nascar-tracks/

I believe I eluded to that in my hunch in the second post. ISC and Bruton have been making money hand over fist for the last few years leading up to this recession. Now We have proof.

So while they offered a cut in ticket prices on some seats, the reality is the teams are taking it in the shins. Yet they are the show. Gee...this almost reminds me of the kind of friction that Indycar teams had with USAC in 79 where the sanctioning body forgot who was actually putting on the show....

It wont lead to that sort of rebellion, but I will say that owning a NASCAR race team sure is a lot harder and more perilous financially than owning the track. Yet I don't pay money to see Bruton Smith or Lesa Kennedy-France count it, I pay to see the cars on the track.