NHRA Marketing Strategy, or Lack Thereof..

[Bobby Fazio]

It's no surprise, class racing is headed down the drain as no young people grasp its concept and NHRA doesn’t do a thing to help promote it. I am curious as to what their long term marketing strategy is? Does anyone in their advertising or marketing department have any kind of actual advertising or marketing experience? I have not one single friend from high school or college that knows anything about drag racing aside from what was portrayed in the Fast and the Furious. At least that Pinks show has slightly made them aware of what the term drag racing means. Nevertheless, from what I see now, NHRA's marketing strategy is a simple (and lucrative) short term only strategy, keep raping the sportsman drivers by increasing entry fees, membership fees, competition number fee, raising fan ticket prices, etc. But what is going to happen 15-20 years from now when a lot of the current drivers retire or simply can’t afford to do it anymore? (Let’s not even get into the debate of what is going to happen to stock and super stock down the line as rules continue to diminish and indexes keep getting quicker.) Will NHRA rely solely on selling tickets to people who want to watch top fuel?

How about a little more advertisement? More TV commercials on channels other than speed network. I’m going to drop the D-word but maybe even some student, military, senior citizen, or group discounts? Perhaps some kind of free item with your purchased ticket (Burger, soda, poster, etc)? Most importantly maybe a small program, about one or two pages long, handed to every fan at the gate that explains all the classes they will see, from Top fuel down to Stock eliminator. And don’t tell me that would cost too much, if anything I’m sure you could throw some sponsors on it and make even more money. Explain in one or two paragraphs a summary of each eliminator, what an index is, a few of the rules they have to follow, what a throttle stop is, etc. I mean come on is there any quicker grandstand-clearing magic trick than watching a pair of Super Gas, Super Street, and Super Comp cars go down the track? “Why does that car slow down after it leaves the starting line, then speed up again?” Perhaps an informative program could clear this up for people.

The whole point is to draw fans to the sport, then hey, NHRA makes more money. Fans can potentially become drivers, again NHRA makes more money.