On the freshly dug grave of the XFL, a new alternative sports league is a-birthing. Or hoping to.
    It's TRAC, which stands for Team Racing Auto Circuit, a brand-new motor sports event that MAXX Motorsports hopes to rev up in 2003.
    The circuit’s biggest innovation: combining the lure of stock car racing with the team-based model of so-called stick-and-ball sports.
    Team San Francisco would race Team Texas. Wisconsin Cheeseheads would turn out to cheer Team Milwaukee.
    That's the idea, anyhow.
    "We want to use the traditional sports model and tie it into the team-based affinities people have for their cities and states. It’s something that doesn’t exist in the marketplace today," says Jon Pritchett, president of TRAC, and also president and COO of Team Sports Entertainment, parent of MAXX Motorsports. 
    "The market is really young when it comes to motor sports, and no one has approached it from our perspective, which is to start with a fresh piece of paper," says Pritchett.
    "The problem is: how do you get people from A to B, to sample it and then become fans? We think the team-based model is the way to do it."
    Critical to TRAC, of course, is getting a national television contract.
    "We think this is a network-television content provider. It’s most important to get the right network or networks, and from there we’d look at cable or other options," says Pritchett.
    Pritchett says TRAC is in talks with all the major networks and hopes to have the beginnings of a deal in the next few months.
    But in these grim post-XFL days, TRAC faces no small number of hurdles. If the disaster of Vince McMahon's XFL taught the world anything, it was that you don't build a loyal fan base for a new sports concept overnight, even when you have a powerful network behind you.
    All NBC's might and heavy promotion could not build a sufficient fan base, and when the league was shuttered at the end of its first season the smart thinking was that the XFL might have done better starting on cable or one of the smaller broadcast networks.
    While the particulars of TV partners, markets and team owner-operators all remain up in the air, one thing TRAC has nailed down is an impressive array of backers.
    TRAC’s board includes people with backgrounds in sports, business and media.
    Among the board members is Robert Wussler, former president of CBS and CBS Sports. Wussler also helped found CNN, WTBS and TNT, and served as president of the Atlanta Hawks and the Atlanta Braves.
    "Robert is a home-run when it comes to media, and it doesn’t hurt that he has substantial sports experience as an owner of some well-run, high-level teams. He’ll be leading the charge when it comes to TV negotiations," says Pritchett.
    Pritchett believes that there are some lessons to be learned from the XFL’s demise.
    "For one, the single-entity structure can work well because of central management, but it’s also more difficult when you don’t have local owners who have money committed and the incentive to do well. That’s why we’ll have owner-operators.
    "Second, you can’t be all things to all people. They said they were a hybrid of wrestling and football, and they missed both. We’re 100 percent motor sports."
    Another challenge for TRAC is the specter of NASCAR.
    Rather than compete directly, Pritchett says TRAC will reach out to fans that NASCAR has missed.
    "We’re not attempting to steal market share but to create a new category and bring new fans into stock car racing, particularly as it relates to minority markets, metropolitan markets and markets west of the Mississippi," he says.
    The trick will be to pull it off, and some think the odds are against it. NASCAR does especially well on television, but when it comes to auto racing it's the exception.
    "For anything that’s not NASCAR, you’re looking at ratings between a 1.0 and a 1.8," says Mike McCarthy, editor of Motorsportstv.com.
    "Personally, I don’t have very high hopes for the series. I understand it’s a novel concept that they’re trying. But most cities are saturated with team sports already, and to think that somehow people will latch onto racing, a sport they’ve probably never heard of, that’s a hard sell for me."
    In TRAC’s favor, track owners might be the new circuit’s first fans.
    "The tracks are starving for content. They shouldn’t have trouble finding a place to race. Even if it’s a Winston Cup track they’re probably going to jump on this," says Hadrian Shaw, a sports analyst at Paul Kagan Associates.
    "It looks good on paper, for sure. It’s a good foundation to have all this diversity in their backers and to have a TV guy in the loop. 
    "It really depends on what they’re trying to be. If they’re trying to be a true minor league to NASCAR, then maybe. If they’re trying to be a big-time league, ratings in the one-or-two range wouldn’t work."

May 17, 2001 © 2001 Media Life

-Gabriel Spitzer is a staff writer for Media Life.

Printer-Friendly Version |  Send to a Friend
Cover Page | Contact Us