Bristol Motor Speedway has struggled with ticket sales in recent NASCAR seasons.Getty Images
Bristol Motor Speedway is lowering pricing on more than 65 percent of its tickets, more than doubling the number of price options, and making its reward program more inclusive as it looks to boost attendance and revenue.
The moves, which will be announced this week, also include launching a small- business club that is focused on developing packages for companies in the area that want to entertain guests at the speedway but don’t have the budget to take on the track’s more expensive assets.
The track, owned by Speedway Motorsports Inc., has reduced ticket pricing as it sells for this spring’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Food City 500, and has increased the number of price points for tickets from six to 13. The track has struggled with attendance in recent years from its past highs of consistent sellouts at the 160,000-seat venue.
“As you evaluated our pricing structure last year with six price points, we had some larger gaps in there,” said Jerry Caldwell, executive vice president and general manager of BMS. “You may have had a fan who wanted to sit in a different location but maybe couldn’t jump all the way up, so this allows them to scoot a little closer to where they want to be.”
Caldwell said BMS got the idea to change its structure from fan feedback and research from SMI and its other seven speedways. Geoff Ulrich, SMI senior vice president of consumer strategies, works with SMI’s speedways on sharing best practices, fan data and marketing tactics.
Tickets for the Food City 500 in April now start at $50, while they start at $60 for the more popular Bass Pro Shops NRA Night Race in August. Caldwell said that the lower prices are “really not that big of a change from where we’ve been [in the past],” but the track feels like even a light reduction could help fuel sales.
BMS is also revamping and rebranding its reward program, which goes from being called BMS iBelong to now Bristol Rewards. The iBelong program, which was developed in 2009, had been solely for full-season ticket holders. The track is now opening the program to weekend and single-day ticket holders.
The program awards points based on ticket sales and other purchases made through BMS’s ticket office, and allows fans to get unique access like pit and driver meeting passes as well as savings on concessions at the track and on fuel at Food City locations. Fans who buy tickets prior to the respective race month get a $10 discount across the venue. For example, the track had renewal and early-bird special pricing for the Food City 500 that saw tickets start at $50; it is now at $60 and will go to $70 on April 1. The race is April 15.
“What we found is we have a lot of folks who have been very loyal to us that may not have fit in our traditional season-ticket holder program,” Caldwell said. “This allows us to expand that and take care of the folks who, for whatever reason, may just always come to the Food City 500 or always come in August.”
Following the lead of a similar program launched at Texas Motor Speedway, BMS is also launching a small-business club, to be called the Business Acceleration Club. The package includes seating for eight at both of the track’s annual Monster Energy Series events, parking passes, infield access, four passes to BMS’s Seat Time Racing School and an outing at nearby golf course The Virginian. The price for admission to the club is $12,500 annually. BMS is hoping to secure eight to 10 new local businesses to participate in the program in 2018.
“We saw it work well at Texas and thought it really makes a lot of sense to do that in our market,” said Caldwell. “To bring what can be intimidating to a lot of small companies, they may look at something and say, ‘I can’t afford a suite or some of these other things.’ We are trying to do the work for them on the front end and make it a one-stop shop.”
