• There has been a recent cluster of spammers accessing BARFer accounts and posting spam. To safeguard your account, please consider changing your password. It would be even better to take the additional step of enabling 2 Factor Authentication (2FA) on your BARF account. Read more here.

AMA NEW SCHEDULE

Holeshot said:
I agree with most of what you said Paul, except for two things: Nascar IS a market where sport bikes would (And do, absent a connection to DMG) sell well. Everyone recalls why they got a sport bike; they wanted something quick and couldn't afford a car. Affordability is a fairly large problem with sport bikes these days and that means not only price, but financing. Japanese rates and credit requirements are pretty strict, hence the low sales numbers.

Premium brands are selling well; KTM, Harley, Ducati, MV…but the Japanese brands (everyday guy/ girl) are suffering. That's likely due to the lack of discretionary income of consumers these days and not knowing how their tax returns are going to work out. But overall, the days of leveraging the house to go sport bike riding are largely done…and that's a problem for the Japanese market. IMO, of course...
Click to expand...

It's totally possible that, as you've mentioned, NASCAR could be a gateway to MC Road racing and I'd love to see it. But honestly, right now I think they need to focus on just getting a headcount in the stands. THEN they can do some crazy stuff and see how it works. To me that means hiring some commentators that don't hurt, stop being fast and loose with the rules, advertise the shit out of the series and probably even have some raffles for ticket holders... so on and so forth. It's going to cost them out of the gate to keep it alive at this point. I don't see any other way at all.

Now that you mention it, I do recall Brett over at Powersports mentioning a few years back that HSBC pulled out on Suzuki. They switched over to some other US based company and that company was/is kind of screwy. I have pretty decent credit and they loaned me $ for a Suzuki GS500E when they were closing the line out and then a few months later with on time payments they turned me down for a trailer. I ended up just paying cash for it as I should have anyway, but still. :wtf That definitely will hurt sales, for sure.

I would imagine it's probably similar for the other Japanese manufacturers since HSBC pretty much pulled out of the U.S. market if memory serves and I think they were all using them.

Yakoo752 said:
What's the "same" problem?

I worked along side AMA/DMG for 2 years and I saw a lot, experienced a lot, and left with a sour taste in my mouth (to some extent). A lot of good and a lot of bad. So I'm curious here.



I disagree and marketing survey's said otherwise as well (when I was researching). Most people who own a motorcycle own it as a secondary vehicle (with the primary being a car)

I will say the cost of a new bike has increased rapidly and that has affected overall sales.
Click to expand...

By that I had meant not someone they want running things because he would probably do things counter to what they think/want. Which ultimately seems to be the problem with DMG, honestly... too stubborn to admit they need some "expert" help even if it is just on a consultation basis.
 
Ozymandias said:
By that I had meant not someone they want running things because he would probably do things counter to what they think/want. Which ultimately seems to be the problem with DMG, honestly... too stubborn to admit they need some "expert" help even if it is just on a consultation basis.
Click to expand...

interesting --- which brings me to...

Whatever happened to the AMA Pro Road Race Advisory Board? :dunno

If you were to field an advisory board with the likes of John Ulrich, Danny Walker, Jason Pridmore, Kevin Schwantz what would come of it?

I see 2 of these people doing it for the love of the sport and 2 wanting money and that's the challenge. How do you spend $25-50k a person when you are bleeding out?
 
Yakoo752 said:
interesting --- which brings me to...

Whatever happened to the AMA Pro Road Race Advisory Board? :dunno

If you were to field an advisory board with the likes of John Ulrich, Danny Walker, Jason Pridmore, Kevin Schwantz what would come of it?

I see 2 of these people doing it for the love of the sport and 2 wanting money and that's the challenge. How do you spend $25-50k a person when you are bleeding out?
Click to expand...

And there's the conundrum. From just the management perspective, DMG has plenty of money but are they willing to budget the funds needed to make the series have a come back and become successful again? Is it they just don't want to admit they don't know? Is it a combination? What other factors are there we don't know?

I can't tell you how many times I've worked somewhere that one person in upper management has no idea what they are doing, is unwilling to admit it BUT has one hell of a good bullshitting game to their boss. :dunno

I don't see any other way to make that series come back other than putting a sizable financial investment into the series but doing that without have a clear cut "this will work" direction would basically be setting that money on fire for all the good it will do them.
 
Even if motorcycle sales are growing for the big 4 Japanese manufacturers, they are only growing on low margin models like Honda 500s, Kawasaki 650s and 300s, etc. Sportbikes aren't getting updates every two years or even every four years. Thats all you need to look at to determine the state of the sportbike market. No updates or all new bikes = not a strong sales category.

Holeshot is 100% correct about the credit issue. Most Japanese sportbikes are bought on credit and easy credit sells bikes. A tight credit market really hurts sales of these bikes.

What about increases in Ducati or BMW sales? They are so low volume, it doesn't affect the greater market. Racing won't ride a wave $$$ from 5,000 more Ducatis or BMWs.

As for the series, DMG or their parent company may have plenty of money but they aren't going to spend it with no chance of return. I've lost count of the number of internet experts who say they should lose money on the TV package, dump a bunch of money into advertising and promotion, lower the sanction fee, raise purses, subsidize team travel, etc., in order to help the series.

Motorcycle road racing in the U.S. is a niche sport and always will be. If DMG poured a million dollars into the series, it would years before any chance of a return. And its a slim chance. As discussed earlier in this thread, the series rarely made any money under the AMA and it probably can't make money without a regular subsidy of some sort like the AMA provided.

You want to see all the manufacturers, highly paid riders, live TV and a line up of big transporters across paddock? Go buy some new Japanese sport bikes. And exhaust systems. And tons of aftermarket bits. The sport will get money when the industry is making money.
 
firstbuell said:
AARRGH!!!

examine those calendar-dated parallel paths within AMA Pro -
the one hand doesn't know what the other's doing

this poor guy's debacle exposes that it's even worse over at AMA Pro than we thought......
Click to expand...

I saw the chronology as well and went WTF?! If they can't even manage the harley class of racing the brought in then what can they manage?
 
Looks like I need to eat a plate of crow on the Wyman issue. Still not sure about how the timetable worked but AMA published a detailed (including high res photos) technical document. Scroll through all four pages. It appears Wyman's head(s) had illegal mods and AMA went so far as to test vs. a control head(s) on a flow bench.

I sure didn't notice a performance advantage on the banking but the heads were modified outside the rules, intentionally or not.

http://amaproracing.cdn.racersites.com/assets/AMAP-RR-2014-Tech-Operational-Log-Daytona-1.pdf
 
Yakoo752 said:
[edited].....interesting --- which brings me to...

Whatever happened to the AMA Pro Road Race Advisory Board? :dunno

If you were to field an advisory board with the likes of John Ulrich, Danny Walker, Jason Pridmore, Kevin Schwantz what would come of it?.....
Click to expand...


JU's been pretty clear across the years that neither the old AMA folks nor the new AMA Pro [keep it straight!] folks wanted to hear what he & others had to say, about most anything - air fence, class structure, promotion, purse, etc., etc.....

note that Mike Kidd's moved on into his own sports promotion company - what he wasn't allowed to accomplish for AMA Pro as an employee, he's gonna accomplish on his own as a private company
 
Thanks for the heads up. I'll tune and find out what Wyman has to say and get some restaurant recommendations for Des Moines.
 
And if you are wondering why our industry is falling apart

just go look at the AFM website for all of 10 minutes - broken links, 404, 403, tbd - it's a disgrace that we are less then a month away from rd 2 and the website is not finished.

at least the AMA gets that right...
 
Yakoo752 said:
And if you are wondering why our industry is falling apart

just go look at the AFM website for all of 10 minutes - broken links, 404, 403, tbd - it's a disgrace that we are less then a month away from rd 2 and the website is not finished.

at least the AMA gets that right...
Click to expand...

They did? I seem to recall shitloads of screwed up links on fanschoice.tv to the point that if you didn't have a direct link you weren't watching shit and I haven't seen any 404 errors on afmracing.org since about 2 weeks after the new site was opened. :dunno
 
Ozymandias said:
They did? I seem to recall shitloads of screwed up links on fanschoice.tv to the point that if you didn't have a direct link you weren't watching shit and I haven't seen any 404 errors on afmracing.org since about 2 weeks after the new site was opened. :dunno
Click to expand...

not AMA Pro Road Racing

but thanks for adding another site that failed :thumbup

and to clarify - Rider Profiles goes no where, both sponsor links dead end at landing pages of nothingness, News hasn't been updated since last season (from an outside looking in view point, these are probably your most important pages)

this is not a direct attack on the AFM, so don't take it that way but people in glass houses should throw no stones type deal
 
Last edited:
To be fair, AMA and AMA Pro are paid services with considerable staff. Isn't AFM mostly volunteer with 1 full time staff member? It sucks, but it is what it is and happens. I was once a board member of CISPA as a volunteer and it can be hard to find time to get the "free" work done.

If it bothers you so much, you could volunteer to update the site. :teeth I see no 404 or 403... 2 of 3 sponsor links do come up to TBD, and yeah, the news is outdated. You have your first things to fix! :thumbup
 
I reserve the right to complain without doing anything about it :x

:laughing

I wouldn't be opposed to helping out actually... I also have ideas on where the site could go, especially when you have people like GoGo writing some really good content.

maybe I should talk to Beetus!
 
Ozymandias said:
To be fair, AMA and AMA Pro are paid services with considerable staff. Isn't AFM mostly volunteer with 1 full time staff member? It sucks, but it is what it is and happens. I was once a board member of CISPA as a volunteer and it can be hard to find time to get the "free" work done.

If it bothers you so much, you could volunteer to update the site. :teeth I see no 404 or 403... 2 of 3 sponsor links do come up to TBD, and yeah, the news is outdated. You have your first things to fix! :thumbup
Click to expand...

 
Monster and RedBull are already spending money in AMA Pro Road Racing. Probably more than what AMA Pro Racing is getting from SOZO.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top