With Speedway Motorsports Revenues Down, Las Vegas Motor Speedway Rolls Out Fan Amenities

 

By ALAN SNEL and DANIEL CLARK

LVSportsBiz.com

 

Photos by DANIEL CLARK

 

It was 20 years ago when former four-time NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon was winning Daytona 500s and helping make South-rooted NASCAR into a mainstream, middle America sport.

 

Back then, there was even chatter of NASCAR transcending to become America’s fifth major league, joining the exclusive fraternity of the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL.

 

But these days, NASCAR is no longer the behemoth it once was back in the late 1990s and NASCAR track venues like Las Vegas Motor Speedway understand they need to add more bells and whistles to spike attendance and appeal to a wider demographic pool — and Speedway officials literally went for the pool.

 

The inaugural South Point 400, the first race in the playoffs, rolled out a Ferris wheel and swimming pool at a social hotspot called the “Turn 4 Turn Up.” LVSportsBiz.com witnessed couples taking selfies on the Ferris wheel, while lots of NASCAR fans were taking a dip in the pool to cool off during a hot day that expected a peak temperature of 101 degrees. The Ferris wheel and pool were free.

 

The Speedway also beefed up its premium fan experience spaces with new loge seating seats and club-style open areas this year. It proved popular when it debuted in March.

 

This comes a few years after the Speedway tried to tap the social media trend by having a social media center at the Neon Garage, where NASCAR drivers swung by to fire off some Tweets.

 

This is the first calendar year that Las Vegas Motor Speedway is staging two NASCAR weekends. Its signature NASCAR weekend is typically held in March, when thousands of visitors come to Las Vegas for the races and also as a spring break trip.

 

But the Speedway’s parent company, North Carolina-based Speedway Motorsports, Inc., reported in its quarterly earnings documents Aug. 1 that the playoff race in Las Vegas Sunday reduced demand for NASCAR events in the first quarter.

 

From the earnings report: “Las Vegas Motor Speedway is hosting a second annual Monster Energy NASCAR Cup race weekend this September 13-16. As management expected, admission revenues from its first quarter 2018 NASCAR events were lower on a comparable year-over-year basis. The Company believes the initial strong appeal of these new playoff races in the Las Vegas market reduced the demand for their first quarter 2018 NASCAR events.”

 

The Speedway Motorsports revenues were a mixed bag. Revenues were down, but net income was up. Let’s take a look.

 

For more on the SMI report, you can click here.

 

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It’s hard to say what the attendance was for the first South Point 400 because Las Vegas Motor Speedway did not respond to questions on it.

 

LVSportsBiz.com can only go on a Las Vegas Metro Police Department tweet that mentioned more than 50,000 fans were expected to come through the Speedway gates Sunday.

 

The Speedway also installed water misters to try and keep fans from overheating Sunday. LVSportsBiz.com witnessed Speedway staffers treating an older woman who apparently collapsed from the heat.

 

LVSportsBiz.com saw fans clustered around cooling mister fans and seeking refuge underneath the grandstands to cope with the heat.

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