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Leagues and Governing Bodies

New Groove At Bristol Results In Exciting Racing, But Is That What Fans Want?

Yesterday's Monster Energy NASCAR Cup race at Bristol Motor Speedway was a "masterwork in terms of suspense, strategy and textbook driving," but whether the Food City 500 was "really the type of drama that hardcore fans want from the short track" is up for debate, according to Allen Gregory of the BRISTOL HERALD COURIER. BMS "built its reputation on a ground and pound style of racing that produced multi-car crashes and driver tantrums." In "numerous chats with campers over the weekend, it seemed all fans wanted a return to the infamous bumper car days of the Hillbilly Thunder Dome." As NASCAR "reaches out to a younger and more edgy fan base raised on action sports and splashy video games, it will be interesting to discover what those new fans think of the new Bristol." If yesterday's "groovy form of racing is here to stay, the marketing campaigns that feature highlight-reel sequences of crashes and finger pointing will have to be replaced by images of drivers moving up and down the track to make passes." Gregory: "Call it technique" (BRISTOL HERALD COURIER, 4/25). ESPN.com's Bob Pockrass wrote opinions "vary on the attempts of Bristol track officials as far as adding a resin with tire rubber ground into it in order to have a solid groove on the bottom." The goal is to return BMS to its "glorious history of drivers rattling each other's cages on the bottom lane." However, the "more likely reality is Bristol will never be Bristol again." It "symbolizes the struggle of the sport as a whole -- trying to grasp a new reality while trying to see what it can do to replicate the glory days of NASCAR's rise" from the mid-'90s through the mid-'00s (ESPN.com, 4/23).

THE RAIN SONG: Bristol-based WJHL-CBS' Nate Morabito reported yesterday's race, won by Jimmie Johnson, was the fourth year in a row that weather has impacted racing at BMS, which "isn't good news" considering BMS' parent company SMI "reported millions of dollars in lost revenue due to lower attendance and bad weather" in '16. SMI's most recent annual report revealed BMS, along with other tracks, experienced "an unusually high number of event weekends with significant poor weather" last year. SMI reported the weather, coupled with already lower attendance, resulted in a $10.1M or 10% loss in admissions company-wide and a $10.1M or 6.9% loss in "event-related revenue like suite rentals, souvenir sales and commissions from food and drink sales" (WJHL.com, 4/24).

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