Look at the gap. If their topline dropped 2 million and they know they squandered association dollars to the tune of a million to pay off Compton, that is not as concerning to me as the increase in cost. That didn't come from sportsman support in most cases. Now rain and reschedules can sure cause increases overall. I just hope they know what they are looking at. It also seems as though they don't realize that no one in this chain HAS to participate. NHRAdepends on discretionary spending from fans AND racers alike. They don't seem to understand that if they make the racing experience bad for racers, just like fans, we will take our money elsewhere. That goes for pros as well. I sure want it all to succeed, because I love class racing, but I sure as heck don't have confidence in most of their decision makers. When you have bean counters and lawyers making the decisions and no real influence from people that love and understand the racer , it is no surprise that their strategy in key areas miss the mark. I don't even want to get into marketing, they don't seem to be even minor league. The contingency program is embarrassing, etc. They need to open their ears to track owners and some key business minded racers that have racing in their hearts and business acumen in their brains. They don't realize that the things that have created value to the racer such as the structure, the incredible large base of members, the network of tracks all supported by the local staff was what made NHRA stand out. If you cut away staff and structure such as tech and all of the niceties that we expected for our money, you are no longer special. You are just a commodity. It quickly goes downhill because the many smaller associations can compete and really do better than NHRA because NHRA chose to stop supporting us. Track owners are not dumb either. If NHRA fails to provide value, they will figure out how to make money without them.
They don't have to chose the wrong path. Even in difficult times, the majority of us want NHRA to succeed and we want to participate. They need to listen and come up with a better plan. When they have a plan,,they need to execute the plan. If the teams in Glendora are in place due to nepotism and buddy deals, but they aren't effective, cut them.Don't cut the staff that are customer facing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Skydog
Did you see how much money NHRA supposedly lost.
From Dragracingonline
No profit, no joy found in NHRA's 2015 tax return
The Agent has just skimmed the NHRA's 2015 tax return and the news isn't good. Their gross income is down from 2014 by $2,000,000 going from about $99.5 million to $97.5 million. The company lost 5.7 million for the 2015 season.
Some quick math after looking at the membership revenue indicates that the association could have lost close to 20 percent of their members between 2014 and 2015. One thing that jumped out at the Agent was that former president Tom Compton was paid just over a million bucks in 2015 including a severance package.
No matter how you look at the NHRA, from a business point of view Peter Clifford and his management team have some issues they are going to have to deal with. One thing is absolute and that is currently the NHRA is both a non-profit and money-losing business. [12/02/16]
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