Second NASCAR race would be nice, but first …

By Richard N. Velotta

Friday, Sept. 4, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Local boosters of NASCAR racing would love for Las Vegas Motor Speedway to host a second Sprint Cup Series race — this one, a night race after Labor Day.

After all, you can’t have too much of a good thing. NASCAR has legions of fans, many who travel the country to 36 Sprint Cup Series races to follow their favorite drivers.

Fans are thrilled by the action — colorful race cars averaging speeds of more than 120 mph — and the danger of those speeds. They also relish access to the drivers during race weekends.

With a capacity of 145,000, the speedway can easily host the state’s best-attended sporting event. Before the economy sank, NASCAR races routinely drew 130,000 fans to the track, but even the average attendance of 110,000 is big — bigger, in fact, than the attendance at the National Football League’s Super Bowl game.

But while tourism leaders dream of cashing in on a second race, operators of Las Vegas Motor Speedway are focusing on a more immediate problem — nailing down a sponsor for the race they have, which is less than six months away.

Last year car builder Carroll Shelby, who has a Las Vegas facility, sponsored the event, known as the Shelby 427. Shelby’s deal was for just the one year.

“It’s our top priority,” said Chris Powell, president and general manager of Las Vegas Motor Speedway. “I would have liked for it to have been done by now.”

Julian Dugas, director of sports marketing, sports and sponsorships for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, said the likeliest targets are automotive companies that would benefit from being out in front of the vast crowd that swarms around fast cars. But with the American automotive industry struggling in the tough economy, it isn’t as easy to commit the big bucks needed for a major sponsorship.

A second race “is something that is openly discussed, but there is nothing on the table at this point,” Dugas said. “Las Vegas is a wonderful platform and a wonderful place for a race to be held. If there is an opportunity to bring in a second race, I’m confident that the powers that be will do everything to make that happen.”

Dugas views the weekend after Labor Day as an ideal date for Las Vegas because no special events are regularly scheduled for then.

But it isn’t as easy as just calling NASCAR’s executives and rolling out the welcome mat.

The NASCAR Sprint Cup racing season begins in Daytona, Fla., in February and ends in Homestead, Fla., in November. Throughout the summer, racers and fans trek to 20 tracks across the country for 36 races.

Las Vegas stages its Sprint Cup race during a late winter weekend, before uncomfortably warm weather arrives and before March Madness basketball fans hit town.

The race weekend starts well before that Friday with a number of sponsored events, meet-and-greets and related activities for fans who arrive early.

On Fridays, drivers qualify for pole positions in the race by running their cars at top speeds in time trials with no other driver on the track. Speeds reach more than 175 mph in qualifying.

Saturday is occupied by the Nationwide Series, the second tier of NASCAR racing. For years, Sam’s Town has sponsored the Nationwide Series race known as the Sam’s Town 300.

The weekend’s grand finale is the Sprint Cup race on Sunday. First run on March 1, 1998, the 400-mile premiere event has had several sponsors over the years, most notably the United Auto Workers and DaimlerChrysler, which held the title sponsorship for seven years.

Powell says securing a seven-figure sponsor is more difficult than it used to be because of the economy.

Several companies, nationally and locally, are considering the sponsorship, he said.

“We’re not going to undersell it due to the difficult economy, but we are more willing to negotiate on pricing,” Powell said. The race sponsorship allows a company to put its name on the race, which is broadcast nationally by Fox and worldwide on various cable television packages. The sponsor also gets its logo painted on the infield grass at the track and access to the sponsor’s suite, which has prime seats for 120 guests.

The convention authority has a clear stake in another NASCAR race, given its mission to help develop special events that drive visitation that puts heads in beds in local resorts.

Race weekend is worth $106.9 million in nongaming revenue to Southern Nevada, according to the convention authority, but that doesn’t tell the whole story about how important NASCAR is to Las Vegas.

The authority has tracked occupancy rates for weekends immediately before and after the event and for the years preceding the city’s hosting of the race. In the 12 years that NASCAR has come to town, in all but one year occupancy was higher on the weekend of the race compared with the previous week. In some cases, the increase is dramatic — a 7.2 percentage point jump in 2007, for example.

But the economy is taking its toll.

Like many high-profile sporting events, the 2010 NASCAR race is dropping ticket prices. Powell said the low-end ticket will cost $49, down from about $85.

So will the Las Vegas Motor Speedway get a second race?

Powell said local officials will keep trying, but a limited number of dates is available.

Fans close to the sport point out that executives who run NASCAR operate a sister company, ISC, that owns many of the tracks where races are run, including Daytona International Speedway, Talladega Superspeedway and Phoenix International Raceway.

Speedway Motorsports Inc., headed by Bruton Smith, owns several other tracks, including the Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

Adding a fall race in Las Vegas would mean taking a race away from one of the other tracks — meaning, for instance, that Smith could relocate one of the races at another of his tracks to Las Vegas. But Smith recently bought a track in Kentucky and wants a NASCAR race there, too.

So for all the hope of adding a second NASCAR race here, the more pressing issue is finding a sponsor for the one Sprint Cup series race that Las Vegas does have.

A version of this story appears in this week’s In Business Las Vegas, a sister publication of the Sun.