Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

I am not looking for a handout.  Great for you that you're healthy and are able to work full time and run side businesses.  My mother passed at 37 and father at 44 so I have been on my own and made my way.  I think you missed my point, I am perfectly fine with where streaming is at right now.  $150 for Flo and $40 per month the next couple months of Dirtvision and I have all that I need.  My point is thatI can afford it at this price point.  Maybe railroad retirement isn't the best but it sure as hell is a lot better than many others.  Another point you likely missed is that for me attending live 410 races is about 6 hours to Knoxville and River Cities and about 5 to Husets and four to Jackson.  I don't know about you at 67 but for me at 70 I wouldn't even think about it without getting. Motel.  Again my RR is good but not $300, all the driving and expenses every weekend good.

I am not ashamed of my finances.  Matter of fact I'm proud that I found a way to join the service to get the GI bill for schooling and proud of supporting a wife and four kids on one income.  If somebody wants to give me shit about how much money I have in the bank then we do not see eye to eye.  Personally I think it's a very arrogant attitude.  Try picking up an old friend or relative and help people get to the races instead of ridiculing them.  

Stan Meissner

It's kind of humorous to me watching you try to describe the difference between live and televised racing and the vibration in your chest. I hooked up F4 Phantoms to the catapult on an aircraft carrier in the early 70's.  Also spent seventeen years taking racing photos and stood in turn one when they took the green.  There is nothing in my racing experience that even comes close to being underneath a jet when they turn them up and I have shot WoO Sprints many times.

Your assumption that I prefer watching from home ignores half of what I said.  Six to eight classes of stock cars and Modifieds locally, I do go see the Limited Sprints once in a while and local 410 shows and I do know what "that feeling in the pit of the stomach" feels like.  If I had access to 410's every weekend I would go every Saturday night  could make it work.  If my damn knees didn't bother me so much I'd charge up the camera and flash batteries and do what I loved doing for years.  Unfortunately time waits for nobody.

Stan Meissner

I think you missed my point. You can't ask tracks to give up their business model of having fans in seats and think Flo can only cost $150 a year. I think a lot of people over estimate the amount of money the tracks are getting out of that. I suspect that Flo is going to cost more than $150 next year. I know a few races ran with sponcership and pay per veiw during the total covid shut downs but people were desperate for something to do then. That was an anomaly. 

I understand what you're saying in principle but I haven't been around the tracks enough to know what management is thinking of their share of streaming revenue.  I'm just an old guy who fell in love with racing in 1960 and think it's awesome that I can stay connected to it without having to devote every weekend of the summer to it.  I did that for years, writing, photography, started a racing website in 1999 and ran it through 2016.  As a customer I leave the pricing up to the people running the tracks and streaming services.  If I can afford it I will continue to get streaming channels and if I can't I will watch YouTube hilites and look at text updates like I did before streaming took off.  I love the streaming because it keeps me connected that I have watched for sixty two years and had the opportunity to be involved in for a time.  If they raise the prices we will see what they come up with and make a decision.  

Stan Meissner

I agree, but think you should stop bragging about your sex life.... ;)

Your reasons for not going are perfectly valid & nobody should give you a hard time about it. So are my reasons, but as soon as the situation changes for me, I'm going to a bunch of races!

Bad knees? I know what you're going thru.... I dragged around one bad knee since 1977 & the other since 1986.... but in 2014 I got them both replaced the same day & its been GREAT! Titanium, same thing as the finest race car parts. I was on the bike in 6 weeks & dancing hard in 4 months..... DO IT! We're lucky to live in the age of modern medicine, no reason to suffer.

I ride my bike 8-10 miles or swim a half mile almost every day.... we have to FIGHT BACK against our eventual demise. We're all gonna go, but I saw my late father get pathetic & am currently watching my Mom do the same. I wanna ENJOY whatever time I have left! :)

I've been reading more and more about tracks re-thinking the streaming model. When FLO started, it was a combo of the SpeedShift stuff, the DirtonDirt stuff and some other cool shows from Eldora etc... Then it morphed into literally everything not WRG...

It's not just that a Port fan can stay home and watch Port on TV, it's that he can watch Lincoln, watch the All Stars, watch some LMs, some mods, some sprint cars from Cali. And if he has DirtVision, forget about it. You can watch everything. So even if Port leaves Flo (not saying they will, just for argument sake), I don't think fans will just return altogether. Some will, but many are now conditioned to want to stay home and have 20 different options to watch every night. 

Threads like this are what keep me coming here after all these years. They are getting more rare, but they still happen. It reminds me of those times when we're all sitting in the grandstand watching the water truck and the grader circle the track… And all the familiar guys around are giving each other the business, waiting for the racing action to get started ... or restarted.  Nothing like a bit of b@ll busting among track friends that hopefully ends with a good belly laugh by all.

For a couple of you that suggested taking an aging family member or friend to the track when you get a chance… Thank you for that! I also spent the last few years of my dad's life shuttling him out to the track, and I gotta say the rides to and from and the conversations that we had at the track, and his appreciation for the whole deal are some of the things that stick with me most. If you get a chance to make that happen for someone… Please do it.

Sometimes the more I say to clear my points up the deeper in I get.  Here are a few key points.

I just got cataract surgery on both eyes last year so I can see to drive long distances and do most of the driving on road trips.

I have a good retirement income and investments but after years of chasing races and buying camera gear I am putting the emphasis on her since retiring in 2018.  Two weeks in Norway, new kitchen cabinets and counters, a trip to Texas and she has taken two trips with my daughter.  We give generously to the kids and grandkids and check of all the family boxes.  It's not that I don't believe the racing industry should give me a free bee, I am just hoping that the streaming prices stay within a range I can continue to manage.

Bottom line is that I have been a Sprint Car fanatic for 62 years and hope to continue through a combination of streaming and live races.  Seeing as I prefer classes that are specials only at my local tracks I have to travel or watch streaming.  If my interest in racing had to involve Hornets, Pure Stocks, Street Stocks, Super Stocks, B Mods and the like I wouldn't bother watching and would find other interests.  
 

I am not the enemy, I don't want anyone's local track to go broke and I don't wish bad on older fans like myself.  I just want to continue to follow Sprint Cars at an affordable price like the ones the streaming services have charged the past few years.  If that was to change and I could no longer afford to stream races it has been a great few years while it lasted.  
 

I will always love racing but family priorities and expenses come first.  I binged watched most of Stranger Things season four last night and enjoyed the hell out of it and that is the competition racing is up against nowadays.  There are other options if the business model to watch 410 Sprints and Super Late Models prices me out of the market.  So far I have only ever seen certain fans who have a bug up their ass about streaming throwing out rumors of massive price increases.  It's never the car owners, sponsors, family and friends who are now able to follow them. I'm not saying it can't or won't happen but if it does I will see then what we're dealing with.

There is a bit of irony with coming on here as an advocate of streaming and getting chastised for wanting to watch Sprint Cars as much as possible?  Seems to me that is why we are all here in the first place so why piss in each other's Wheaties?  

Stan Meissner

I hope you don't get in much deeper. You should write a book and make people pay to read your yarns.

LOL, my late father-in-law used to say that "I have the gift of gab".  Basically his watered down way of saying I'm full of shit and can't keep my mouth shut.  I did pump out a few multi page articles in Flat Out back in the day so I do tend to get carried away with the writing.  If people don't want to read my posts I don't blame them.  ;)

Stan Meissner

I just watch the A feature highlights of the Dirt Cup turn up at Skagit Speedway . Race was on Monday night 37 410's I know it was a Monday Night . But you could have shot a cannon off in the in the stands and not hit anyone . There couldn't have been 100 people there . I also saw a video of the Thursday night at the Masters at Ceder Lake Wi and the crowd was terrible there too . I can remember in the past before this tv stuff if you had a special on a weeknight you would get people in the stands if you ran a fast show . Now with tv no one shows up in books they have to be losing money . I wonder what the crowd will be like at Husets on Wednesday and Thursday June 22/23 . Will they go to the track or sit at on the couch in the AC if they sit at home Tod will lose money    Glen Murra

Say whatever you want...

If any of us had a bunch of important things to do we wouldn't be on HH! ;)

I hope....

To be honest if this were to happen the only thing that would change is that I wouldn't know whats going on at Port or Lincoln - I'd probably be less likely to go for the few times I do each year. I go to Williams Grove on Fridays and that is it I've got too much else going on to go 2-3 times per week like I used to. Flo has made it possible to continue to keep up with it and keep me as a fan of the tracks, if that went away I definitely wouldn't just find more time to go. 

Cedar Lake never gets their biggest crowds on day one of a three day show.  Add the 90 degree weather to having to get up for work and the expense of multi day shows and it's not a surprise.  The Masters classes raced Friday and Saturday and when they have specials they throw in the night before for the support classes that will be off the final two nights.  They use another streaming service that charges by the night.  Essentially what you saw was a weekly show moved up two nights.  I haven't been to the Masters since they dropped IRA Sprints and replaced them with USMTS Modifieds and Late Models.  They are the WISSOTA type Lates, the local Late Model equivalent of 360's with Super Lates having the big motors.  
 

Cedar Lakes biggest crowd of the year is School Bus night when local schools build racing buses and all the kids come out.  My granddaughter is going to start her senior year so my son and his buddy went with the kids.  He said that the crowd was the biggest he has ever seen and it got kind of rowdy compared to the racing crowd.  The Bus races draw a bigger crowd than WoO Sprints and USA Nationals, their biggest racing events of the season.  They run a few of the classes that don't have much of a purse and max their earnings for the night.  
 

The photographer standing on the ATV taking pics at all their races is my friend Vince.  We shot pics every weekend and traveled to different tracks together until my wheels fell off at around 65.  That was my home away from home for years.  Miss the place, they have done a lot of improvements since I was a regular.  That is part of live racing for me nowadays, sit and watch everybody I know doing their thing on the other side of the fence.  Aging out of a passion and watching from a distance can play tricks on a fella's head.  I think that's part of staying away from it for me.  If I had always sat in the stands I would likely feel different.  

Stan Meissner

Isn't it also $20 to get into a regular show now on average in PA? The All Stars are around $25-30 and WoO $35-40 in PA. Maybe people just save their money for Speedweeks, the big shows at Port and Lincoln and the WoO. 

My daughter sold 50/50 tickets at Port Royal during the 08 high gas prices and economic slowdown. What she said was people still came to races but spent less money on things like that while there. I do think conditions right now have the potenial to get much worse toward fall when people start having to fill fuel tanks for heating oil and gas,

The two-day WoO show at Cedar Lake is $40 on Friday and $45 on Saturday for general admission.  In comparing it to places like PA, OH, CA and IA we generally get between 24-30 cars and have UMSS Sprints (close to 305's) that draws twenty or so.  I think this year it's the non-wing on night one and winged on night two.  When I pay $45 for a WoO show up here it's not going to be the same as $45 to see a WoO show in PA.

It depends on the forecast how many cars we get as I can't think of any 410's around this area anymore.  They all travel from up by Grand Forks or from down by Jackson/Husets or Knoxville and I believe the IRA still participates.  I have seen drivers run here on Friday then go to Knoxville on Saturday because they were in the points chase.  This year I don't know what to expect with fuel prices.  Location goes a long way towards one's local racing experience and opinion of streaming.  For me a lot of times it's the best show compared to a weekly stock car and modified track locally.  Nobody that I know goes on twelve hour round trip excursions every weekend all summer.  I have known people who lived up here but would only go to Knoxville and one of my cousins moved down there to be closer to the racing.  We have some decent special events up here but if a person feels compelled to attend weekly Sprint Car racing we either settle for sitting through multiple classes or a lot of traveling or (drum roll) streaming most weekends.

Stan Meissner

Appologize for all the posts but part of the situation is that I rarely talk to other racing fans anymore.  This board and social media is where I "socialize" with other racing fans most of the time.  SOS!!! racing fan in exile.  ;)

Stan Meissner

I don't know how much Flo is making , but I bet it is A LOT. The track I know of got (2021) about $1200 per night from them . That equals out to about 60 people per night. I know they lose more people than that on any given night. Plus what the track is losing on concessions. I think either the tracks needs to bargain for more money per race from Flo, or request a blackout radius of 50 or miles. Something has to give, these tracks need people in the seats.