Mario James, Gleaner WriterI have a theory. The popularity of a sport is directly related to the cost of its gear. Football, tennis, badminton, cricket all use gear that is either easily fashioned out of household materials or refuse, or the gear is readily (cheaply) available to the man in the street. Football can be played in the street with little more than a stuffed juice box and a bit of kerb to play on. Shoes are optional, and goalposts can be represented with stones, easy pickings on any avenue. Cricket falls into the same category. Badminton can be played in the backyard with little more than a net, racquets and some verbal rules as to where the imaginary court lines are, if one is so inclined.
Tennis, however, needs a court which isn't available in every neighbourhood. So it isn't as popular as the aforementioned mega-populars. Golf suffers the same fate, as does cycling (casual road and velodrome racing bikes can cost more than US $6,000). Because not many people participate in the sports at the grass-roots level, spectator involvement suffers, and so from a business point of view, they are not really viable marketing tools for people who want to promote products. Jamaica, with its relatively small population, brings this trend into sharp relief, our penchant to focus market spending on tried and true traditional sports, such as track and field, cricket and football.
But there is one facet of sport that constantly proves my theory wrong, and this is motor racing. This is the arguably the most expensive sport that one can engage in, yet it has the second largest international viewership (second only to World Cup soccer) and the largest spectator involvement (the venues are huge). If you think about it, while motor racing kit is really expensive, most everyone in the developed or developing world aspires to own a motor car at one time or other in their lives. And while most of them don't aspire to be race car drivers, in owning and operating a motor vehicle they develop the basic skill set needed for the sport.
So, most of the populace can relate.
Fast car business in Jamaica is definitely on the increase. Jamaica probably has one of the largest Mitsubishi Evolution populations worldwide per capita. WRX owners are well represented also. Speed shops, like Peter Moodie's NGRacing, Chressmore White's Auto Source and Paul Lee's P&L Auto are coming to the fore. But the real eye-opener, especially from a marketing point of view, is the huge numbers of spectators that have been attending the race events. The Red Bull F1 spectacle saw 30,000 folks line Trafalgar Road, while Buémí did burnouts on our city streets. Dover has attracted close to 10,000 spectators on average so far. More telling was the last meet which, despite having a local Test match scheduled for the same Sunday, still managed to fill the stands.
Nevasatisfy'd, the first drag meet held at the JamWest raceway in a long time, was instantly profitable, pulling in more than 10,000 paying spectators. While the organisation of that meet left a little to be desired, it says that the drags are the most profitable form of motorsport on the Jamaican motoring calendar. The Nevastysfy'd sequel is this Sunday, and should exceed expectations as to spectator turnout. The promoters (LueBoyz and Dr Lushus) have improved access to and from the venue, and this was probably the only obstacle to the staging of a problem-free event.
The JRDC's Marck Carey and Hilary Jardin, OD, have done wonders in promoting a Caribbean racing series. Technology has improved access to track data for the media, which can only help in communicating the info publicly. Big ticket sponsors are coming on board, and some time in the future enough greenbacks might be made so that the 'actors in the play' - the drivers - can get more to allay their costs. But it has become a viable business proposition, from a promotional point of view, and though there are still kinks to be worked out, one wonders where it can go from here.
Major league series
The major league series, like Formula 1, would seemingly have little incentive to come here, even if we had a state-of-the-art facility. The consensus is that the local market is too small, and even the tickets are too expensive for the average Jamaican to show up (the cheapest 2008 Nurburgring tickets cost J$19,000 each, and that gets the purchaser a seat in the bleachers). But what of the benefits? While viewership might not be up to, say, World Cup football levels, Automotives would be willing to wager that the size of the audience is at least on par with that of World Cup cricket, with the attendant benefits of a yearly mega event.
But it is prohibitively expensive, and F1 organisers don't need us from a business point of view, which would put us at a grave disadvantage when negotiating terms. However, we have a neighbour that is closer, and is probably looking to expand its horizons. NASCAR, the NHRA and the IRL/CART conglomerate are all looking to supersede US boundaries. NASCAR SPRINT Cup is the fastest growing spectator sport in the US, with events attracting sometimes as much as 300,000 spectators - a lot of them flying in. If a track could be constructed locally, within a stone's throw of the sea, the resulting event would be a promoter's dream. With the right airlineticket/hotel price/package - and a tour or two thrown in for good measure - it shouldn't be that hard to get even a fourth of that number here. These folk are rabid about racing, and they aren't disruptive. All it takes, really, is the political will to do it. The spin-off benefits would be almost incalculable. I think that once the rapids are negotiated, if we do this right, the other sanctioning bodies will be racing to our doorstep. What do you think?
mario.james@gleanerjm.com
