Regional teams. Could that be what NASCAR needs?

I can say that once Jr. moves on after this season, I don't have anyone in particular that I'll be rooting for. I'll simply be watching a sport that I love. Now, if I had a Pittsburgh, PA based team to root for against a Cleveland or Baltimore based team..... I'd jump on that wagon in a heartbeat.
 
Never have cared where the team is from, doesn't make any difference to me. McMurray, Boyer and Buescher are from the adjoining states, Bell is from Oklahoma so I root for him. I wonder how many people would show up if Barney was in the Charlotte area.
 
StandOnIt said:
Never have cared where the team is from, doesn't make any difference to me. McMurray, Boyer and Buescher are from the adjoining states, Bell is from Oklahoma so I root for him. I wonder how many people would show up if Barney was in the Charlotte area.
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I was thinking a step further. Think of it this way. Stick & Ball Alert! Maybe the drivers that you just mentioned drove for regions/cities. City based teams. Like we have in the other major sports.

I can only speak for myself. In Pittsburgh, we have the Steelers, Pirates & Penguins. No NBA team. I currently do not watch the NBA. I have no interest in it. If Pittsburgh started a franchise, I'd probably be tuned into every single game, just like I am with our other teams. I realize not everyone is that way but I'd venture to guess that many are.
 
Maybe in the distant (really distant) future? I don't see the benefit of relocating existing teams if that's what he's suggesting. Talk about something that's not cost efficient at all, let's pick up and move an entire company to another state/part of the country.

However, if HMS wants to come on down to FL I'd spend a lot of time there :cool:
 
I like this idea and think it would only help grow the sport. Think of it this way, if you want to be apart of NASCAR today, you have to move to Charlotte or Daytona. Imagine if you had people working all over the country for teams. Then those teams could grow a local fan base and NASCAR could grow along with it.

I would love to see some teams based out of Phoenix, Chicago, Vegas, LA, etc There are a lot of good car cultures in these cities that I think people could get behind a team. Chicago is a huge sports town that just loves to compete and they love a winner no matter what sport, much like Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, etc.
 
And in the same breath Barney is talking about saving money, the only team miles away from all of the talent pool personnel and other spheres of influence. Now if they can soak the taxpayer for more subsidized buildings like stick n ball?
 
Skoalbandit33 said:
Even smart guys like Barney have the odd dumb idea and this is one of them so expect Nascar to implement it post haste.
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Agreed this needs to be something that is done organically like BV has done. Forcing teams to relocate for no reason is not an intelligent decision.
 
AdoubleU24 said:
Maybe in the distant (really distant) future? I don't see the benefit of relocating existing teams if that's what he's suggesting. Talk about something that's not cost efficient at all, let's pick up and move an entire company to another state/part of the country.

However, if HMS wants to come on down to FL I'd spend a lot of time there :cool:
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Yeah, tell Barney he has to move from Colorado because someone else that has been in the series longer claimed that territory. See how receptive Barney is to relocating to Salem Oregon.
 
StandOnIt said:
And in the same breath Barney is talking about saving money, the only team miles away from all of the talent pool personnel and other spheres of influence. Now if they can soak the taxpayer for more subsidized buildings like stick n ball?
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The issue is how does NASCAR make it more financially efficient for teams to relocate. Crew members are just college football players and technical skills are located all over the states. There has to be some kind of local advantage for moving the team to Phoenix, Chicago, etc. Maybe, they are allowed unlimited practice time at their home track?
 
LouieLouie said:
The issue is how does NASCAR make it more financially efficient for teams to relocate. Crew members are just college football players and technical skills are located all over the states. There has to be some kind of local advantage for moving the team to Phoenix, Chicago, etc. Maybe, they are allowed unlimited practice time at their home track?
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Nascar? it gets so weird comparing stick n ball to Nascar. The average stick n ball fan knows nothing or will give a care about Nascar. It is a technology based sport, Larger teams lease out equipment very expensive equipment to "save" expenses. Recently the Woods brothers moved their whole shop to be closer to the Penske organization, not farther away, think about why they did that?
 
With all the teams clustered around Charlotte, quite a lot of talent poaching and secret sharing goes on. Barney has said before it's an advantage to be located so far away just to get away from all that.
 
I think the whole point of his quotes are being completely misunderstood. It was from a fans perspective of having a reason to root for teams. Generating interest in the sport. He's talking about a different way of looking at the sport.
 
Barney, I would think, spends more money on logistics and travel than the rest of the cup teams do, so if saving money is a concern he might should've considered where the majority of the tracks are located before he started a race team.

His idea of having teams all over is cool, yes, but it would take at least 50 years to even see the end game. And that's probably being generous. Race teams don't just sprout up like spring flowers, especially competitive ones. This will sound fair-weather of me, but nobody wants to root for a non-competitive team. How many Brett Moffitt fans have you come across? So if a team in Tampa sprouts up that is of the back marker caliber, that's not going to attract anybody. The Bucs can't even keep their stands full season to season and they've won a Super Bowl.
 
Acs said:
With all the teams clustered around Charlotte, quite a lot of talent poaching and secret sharing goes on. Barney has said before it's an advantage to be located so far away just to get away from all that.
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He has always had sponsorship problems, self sponsored until recently. Sponsors aren't flocking to Denver. Most of the sponsors are in the heavily populated East coast.

Barney Visser about 77 on @SiriusXMNASCAR: "We don't want to give up that car, but if we don't get the sponsorship, we're going to have to."
 
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Charlie Spencer said:
Anybody remember this one? Supposedly the teams would 'represent' different cities, although it was likely they'd be based in Charlotte.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Racing_Auto_Circuit
http://www.jayski.com/pages/trac.htm

Otherwise, I think having an actual track in town would attract more fans than having a team that never races within an eight hour radius (Denver to Kansas City).
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Yeah but try to plop a race track down just about anywhere on the East coast or West coast and boom confetti :Dnot in my neighborhood
 
as it is now, a driver like Kez has fans from every where, but many are from Michigan and the region around that. You don't need to polarize any fans by regions. That is mostly a stick n ball thing.
 
It could help attract more fans, but as mentioned, I think having a track in your city would help more than having a city team.
 
Barney wants to reduce / control costs but thinks this is a good idea ...

I'm glad he's good at the mattress business.
 
StandOnIt said:
as it is now, a driver like Kez has fans from every where, but many are from Michigan and the region around that. You don't need to polarize any fans by regions. That is mostly a stick n ball thing.
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Yeah drivers are the regional connection not the teams. Now I don't think NASCAR really emphasizes the drivers hometowns a whole lot unless they are at their home track. I don't think having teams spread out across the country would do any harm either and wouldn't mind seeing more like Furniture Row.
 
Break the country up into 40 regions, the region champion competes in cup the following year.
Make it happen Brian!


I'm being sarcastic, but you know the idiot must have had idea after waking up from his alcohol induced slumber, now one of his lackeys is selling the idea.
 
It has been tried before in Charlie's post, it isn't cost effective on just about every level and basically is a one car team doing it the hard way. They are playing up the idea over in Europe in the Whelen Nascar series using the country the driver is from to create a rivalry, but I don't know if they have shops in the various countries. I think they have drivers from three or four countries. But every country in Europe would be like every state in the U.S. being a country. different situation.
 
I will say this about Barney......He is right--The Denver area has embraced his team. However, I think that the regional idea is misguided. NASCAR fans are drawn to different drivers/teams for a variety of reason. You put a Chevy driver/team up here in my neck of the woods, I wouldn't give them a second look. I am a manufacturer driven fan. I wouldn't give a **** if the shop was next door. Other fans are driver by drivers, etc. Stick and ball is more regional.
 
StandOnIt said:
It has been tried before in Charlie's post, it isn't cost effective on just about every level and basically is a one car team doing it the hard way. They are playing up the idea over in Europe in the Whelen Nascar series using the country the driver is from to create a rivalry, but I don't know if they have shops in the various countries. I think they have drivers from three or four countries. But every country in Europe would be like every state in the U.S. being a country. different situation.
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It makes sense in Euro Whelen. Europeans are accustomed seeing sports participants identified by country. Outside of the Olympics and maybe golf's major tournaments, US sports fans generally don't care.
 
Charlie Spencer said:
It makes sense in Euro Whelen. Europeans are accustomed seeing sports participants identified by country. Outside of the Olympics and maybe golf's major tournaments, US sports fans generally don't care.
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yeah different languages, and customs and you can fit most of them in the state of Texas geographically.
 
Not a bad idea to really think about but NASCAR is dead set on Daytona Beach and Charlotte.
 
Revman said:
I will say this about Barney......He is right--The Denver area has embraced his team. However, I think that the regional idea is misguided. NASCAR fans are drawn to different drivers/teams for a variety of reason. You put a Chevy driver/team up here in my neck of the woods, I wouldn't give them a second look. I am a manufacturer driven fan. I wouldn't give a sh!t if the shop was next door. Other fans are driver by drivers, etc. Stick and ball is more regional.
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I've thought about this idea before, but what you say is where it ends with me as well. If you give my city a manufacturer or driver I don't like, I'm not going to root for him just because it's the hometown team. It's not like there could be head to head matchups either.
 
Did anyone in this thread actually listen to the interview?

Barney wasn't suggesting current owners move all over the country and turn their team names into cities. What he said was that NASCAR lacks a geographic footprint from an ownership/team standpoint (true) and that Colorado residents who wouldn't normally care about NASCAR suddenly care because they feel like there's a team they can relate to (true) and he'd love to see new owners step in from lots of other parts of the country similar to what he's done (his opinion, but I agree 100% with it).

He wasn't suggesting change. He was simply talking in a "wouldn't it be nice if...." kinda way.
 
StandOnIt said:
He has always had sponsorship problems, self sponsored until recently. Sponsors aren't flocking to Denver. Most of the sponsors are in the heavily populated East coast.

Barney Visser about 77 on @SiriusXMNASCAR: "We don't want to give up that car, but if we don't get the sponsorship, we're going to have to."
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Lol, this is nonsense. Rick Hendrick, Roger Penske and Gene Haas have all paid more out of their pockets than Barney. The difference between Barney and those three is that Barney doesn't want to pay for anything himself anymore. So goodbye 77. If those three suddenly decided they didn't want to pay for anything themselves anymore, there would be no less than 5 more cars off the track.
 
You were saying what I posted was nonsense. Thinking that Hendrick, Penske, and Haas were going to bail "when pigs fly" Nonsense to nonsense I guess.
 
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