Former Charlotte Motor Speedway President Humpy Wheeler today announced the formation of a new company that will represent grassroots racetracks nationwide in national sponsorship sales. The company, Speedway Benefits, has gotten commitments from 400 of the 1,200 grassroots racetracks around the country, and it claims that they attract 20 million fans annually. Wheeler said, “Big companies have been very uninterested in going out and get the work you have to do to get a few short tracks or get a bunch of them. It would take a tremendous amount of time. We’re going to try to back this up with sound numbers so that the sponsor knows how many people they’ve reached at the Belleville Speedway (Ill.) or the Devil’s Bowl in Texas.”
Wheeler said that Speedway Benefits has not set pricing for national sponsorships. It will split sales revenue among tracks by dividing them into five tiers based on average annual attendance and assigning each tier a percentage of revenue. In addition to sales, the company wants to become a collective buyer of products that all the tracks use like cups and toilet paper. Wheeler said, “We can buy the famous commodity toilet paper and save them 100-120% on that. Whether you’re a track in Minnesota or Florida, what you buy is pretty much the same.”
