Motorsports Authentics has an emerging competitor in the trackside retail business, and it's a company from within its own family at Speedway Motorsports Inc.
The sibling rival is Sports Design, a little-known trackside retail company owned by SMI, which also owns 50 percent of Motorsports Authentics. International Speedway Corp. owns the other half of MA, which reported losses of $40 million to $50 million this year.
Sports Design has been around longer than Motorsports Authentics; it was founded about a decade ago and purchased by SMI in 2003. Its trackside retail operations have been limited to an ongoing relationship with Petty Enterprises and the now-defunct MB2 Motorsports, but Sports Design took on a much more prominent profile recently when it acquired the business at Penske Racing and Dale Earnhardt Inc., two of NASCAR's top teams, for the 2008 season. Penske and DEI had been with Motorsports Authentics the past two seasons.
Bruton Smith, SMI's chairman, insists that Sports Design will not cannibalize Motorsports Authentics.
"We'd never let that happen," Smith said. "We've got too much invested."
