Charlotte Motor Speedway attempts to woo fans with creative ticket pricing, driver accessibility
Charlotte Motor Speedway President Marcus Smith is trying to making CMS more fan friendly. // David Griffin, NASCAR Scene
If you’re a fan of Kasey Kahne, then perhaps Charlotte Motor Speedway’s Budweiser OktoberFast ticket package is for you.
Maybe Jamie McMurray is more to your liking. If so, then the Bass Pro Shops ticket package can put you on the Earnhardt Ganassi Racing driver’s trail.
How much more old school does it get than meeting legendary drivers Richard Petty and Junior Johnson? The Hall of Fame ticket package offered by CMS, which includes a trip to the NASCAR Hall of Fame, can put you face to face with the King and the man once dubbed the last American hero.
Those packages, as well as several others, are just some of the ways officials at Charlotte continue to develop in an attempt to provide a better racing experience for the fans.
With attendance figures a continuing concern for tracks hosting Sprint Cup events, facilities have ramped up their efforts in an attempt to not only make their events more affordable, but more memorable as well.
“It’s really all about putting on the best show, and that starts from the time you buy the ticket until you get home,” Marcus Smith, president of CMS and Speedway Motorsports Inc. said Sept. 5. “We work hard to provide the very best first, second and last impression for the people that come here.”
The 1.5-mile track will host the Oct. 16 Bank of America 500. It’s the lone night race among the 10 events that make up this year’s Chase For The Sprint Cup.
“Every fan wants to see more drivers,” Smith said. “Over the last several years, driver have been pulled in more directions, but more recently the sponsors, drivers and teams have realized that our guys are so popular because they are so accessible, and we need to give that accessibility back to the fans.”
Such meet-and-greet opportunities aren’t the only way fans can get up close. At Charlotte, drivers and other celebrities can be seen at the Performance Racing Network’s Up To Speed program. Appearances on the Speed stage occur at each track as well.
“Everybody has access to those types of elements,” Smith said. “They aren’t just for somebody that buys the expensive ticket. So there’s a little something for everybody.”
While driver access is something most fans can’t seem to get enough of, Smith said other activities are spread out around the speedway in an effort to satisfy as many race fans as possible.
“The way I look at it, the speedways are huge,” he said. “We’ve got 10,000 campsites, on average, at our speedways. So if we’re doing one thing, even if it’s really good, it’s only hitting about 3,000-4,000 people. We’ve got a lot more people out here. You’ve got 130,000 people on a weekend. So we’ll have multiple things going on at the same time around the campgrounds, all around the speedway and in the infield to just add to the fun of a weekend. It might be something as simple as a cornhole tournament in one area to something as cool as meeting a driver at the Speed stage. There are things like that going on all the way around the property to make coming to the race the great fun it ought to be for the fans.”
Ticket prices, he said, are similar to those of nearly a decade ago, something he refers to as a “back to the future deal.”
“You can still buy an inexpensive ticket and you can still buy an expensive ticket, it just depends on where you want to sit,” Smith said.
“If you can’t see the pits [from your seat], you’re going to have a really good price on your ticket, anything from $39 to $50, something in that area. You’ll be able to bring kids for a lot less, $10-$20 in some cases. It’s a really good value.”
Smith is a sports fan – racing and football primarily, he said – but it’s not often that he gets to actually enjoy the racing that takes place at any one of the track’s seven properties. When you’re president of the company, work often has a tendency to get in the way.
“That’s the part that’s disappointing,” he said. “But I do get to take some of it in. But what I do love, and what my dad (SMI founder Bruton Smith) loves, is we’re putting on a party. So having the kind of facilities and activities that people enjoy, that’s important to us. People are paying their hard-earned money to come here and watch a race and enjoy themselves. We want to make sure that they feel like everything was worth it at the end of the day.
“I look at it like you’re giving me a piece of your life, the time it took to earn the money to come here, the time it took to drive – a lot of fans are driving more than 400 miles one way to get here. If you’re giving us that, we need to give you a great time so you have some fantastic memories to tell when you get home.”
