No words needed: NHRA is Boooring!

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Steve Pitt

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How many 3-second runs in a 3-hour program?

Jeff, as always a well written, thoughtful column. Thank you. I thought I might add one other aspect to the problem that drag racing faces with regard to advertisers.

As you said, number of eyeballs represents a huge consideration for advertisers, but there is another aspect: eyeball TIME.

NASCAR and other non-drag racing motorsports provide extended on-air time.  The camera might follow a NASCAR battle for many minutes, while the typical eyeball time for drag racing is in seconds, maybe a minute or two (including pre-race track action).

It's OVERALL exposure to a sponsor's message that provides the ROI for their dollars spent.

The "action" on the track is minutes (or hours) long in NASCAR. Seconds long in drag racing.

NHRA does as good a job as one might consider by mentioning sponsor names during broadcasts, showing as much of the pre-race track action as is reasonable, and such...but the overall exposure to a given message is inherently much, much less than for NASCAR.

I don't have a solution. I will leave that to more capable minds than mine...but, I do think it's one of the issues drag racing faces when the marketing departments meet to determine where to spend sponsorship dollars.

Regards,

Gerry Harrison

Twain Harte, CA

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NHRA can’t produce big numbers

In regards to Burk's editorial on NASCAR and NHRA corporate sponsorships... NHRA will never get major advertising dollars compared to NASCAR because NHRA can't provide hours of TV exposure for a particular brand like NASCAR can. The reason why corporate America is willing to spend $20 million on a NASCAR sponsorship is because of the TV exposure and CPM. It would cost a sponsor multiples of their NASCAR sponsorship fee for equal TV commercial time.

With limited TV exposure and viewership NHRA has little going for it when it comes to obtaining sponsorships from corporate America. Marketing execs would rather go with the NASCAR numbers and cover themselves than to risk being wrong by spending a significant portion of their budget with NHRA. The absolutely HORRIBLE NHRA TV race coverage that typically gets preempted, cut short, redirected to unavailable TV channels, etc. doesn't help one bit.

IMNHO with no prep (or no clue) racing, Street Outlaws TV shows, etc. NHRA's future is perilous. NHRA currently exists to create big pay days for the executives and little else. NHRA gave up on motorsports decades ago when they concluded that they could increase their salaries and do little to grow the sport - which is why they are in trouble now and desperately holding on to a vanishing customer base.

Jorge Meister

New York City