Race fans, apparently, are killing stock-car racing.
The problem, everyone seemed to agree, is that the costs involved in stock-car racing are completely out of control. But nobody knows whom to blame.
Actually, that's not accurate. Everybody knows whom to blame everybody else.
The circular finger-pointing began when Speedway Motorsports Inc. chairman Bruton Smith and Lowe's Motor Speedway president Humpy Wheeler held "a tire-side chat" at the Charlotte track last week.
"We need somebody who gets up every morning and thinks about ways to cut the cost of racing," Wheeler said. "If you've got a race team, your first thought every morning is how to go fast. Going fast costs money, and we need to beat that down."
The nature of the sport is that teams will spend every dollar they can wring out of a sponsor or win from a track's purse and then some to buy the latest technology aimed at making them go faster. Surely they can't be held at fault for that, can they?
No, said Smith, who said it is up to NASCAR to rein in what it costs for teams to compete and for tracks to stage events. Smith said the sanctioning fees his track pays NASCAR for its Cup events are up 110 percent since 1998, and he sees no justification for that.
Purses and maintenance, security and labor costs are up, too, and a flat economy has slowed the growth in corporate spending. If something isn't done, Smith said, racing is headed down a path that other professional sports have traveled.
"Today, some car owners are talking about a $16 million sponsor," Smith said. "How did we get there? We got there because greed has entered our sport, and it's damaging an awful lot of things we do."
NASCAR's television deal pumped about $225 million into the sport last year, a figure NASCAR expects will be higher in 2002. And the average Cup race purse increased 31 percent from just under $2.5 million in 2000 to just over $3.25 million last season, according to NASCAR.
So race teams are getting more money and sponsors are getting more bang for their buck. Drivers live in million-dollar motor homes at the track and fly around in private jets. Team owners keep building bigger and bigger headquarters, hiring more and more people and buying more and more fancy equipment.
They have to, they say, to keep up with the other car owners who're doing the same thing.
So the bottom line is that everybody in racing spends so much more money these days because there is so much money in the sport to spend.
Where does all of this money that's hurting the sport so badly come from?
Race fans.
They're the ones who're buying the tickets, watching on television and showing their loyalty by purchasing a sponsor's products.
Without the fans, NASCAR would not be drowning in this tidal wave of popularity, and nobody would be worried about the consequences of spending all that money.
And you thought you had problems.
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