IT SADDENS me to interrupt your festive season enjoyment with news of more organisational ignorance from within the world of Speedway.

Recent news confirmed that some of the powers-that-be behind the upcoming 62^nd Australian Sprintcar Championship have knocked back a significant free to air TV opportunity for the upcoming milestone event.

Coverage had been planned to air across 7plus for the event at Murray Bridge Speedway on January 30-February 1, with free-to-air highlights coverage on 7mate post the event that will decide the next AUS#1.

The coverage would have been produced by the same team who put together the excellent coverage from The West and, indeed, last year’s remarkable ASC from Premier Speedway which TRT wrote about here:

Recce visits to the little bullring 50 minutes up the freeway from Adelaide had been made and professional commentators were booked for the two-night show that stands as one of the largest Sprint Car events in the country.

Navel Gazing

Organisers have apparently blamed costs but it’s just another example of Sprintcar racing showcasing a lack of ability to look up at the road ahead.

I won’t even start on the lack of professionalism pulling out of an agreement that includes a major Australian broadcaster less than thirty days from the event.

Instead, the Clay-Per-View streaming service, which is subscriber based on a per-event basis, will cover the event which means fans will be paying somewhere in the vicinity of $30 a night to watch it and a wider audience that won’t even know it’s on.

And that’s not a jab at Clay-Per-View, they’ll do a fine job covering the event. But that’s not the point.

It’s more unfortunate short-term thinking from Sprintcar’s powerbrokers at a time when their sport has perhaps never been more visible in Australia.

This was the time to strike and capitalise on the momentum the sport has by opening the doors, even at the cost of some investment, to a potentially large audience. Unfortunately it was not to be.

A bust call in boom times

Certainly, it’s hard to remember when it was as healthy and with such a bright outlook that is enjoys at present.  

The VAILO Adelaide 500 ‘Sprintcars in the City’ was an unqualified success and genuinely exposed the sport to a new audience never tapped into before. The temporary track changed perceptions of what could be done for the sport and produced excellent racing.

In the West, the Maddington Toyota series continues to boom (perhaps because, in true West Aussie style, they ignore what happens in the remainder of Australia and do their own thing) and the $100,000 to win High Limits event saw more than 25,000 through the gates as Kyle Larson come from the ‘States to race and, predictably, win the lot. In an instant it’s become one of the largest Sprintcar events ever held in Australia and certainly the richest.

The recently concluded Brandt Sprintcar Speedweek has been excellent and returned a World Series Sprintcars-style feel to the five-night stretch across the Christmas / New Year period, with great crowds and really good racing.

Even the beleaguered Sydney Speedway has been getting its act together with strong crowds and good racing across their summer Speedweek thanks to the efforts of Garry Wilmington and his team, while up in Queensland there’s been strong representation at Toowoomba’s track despite Archefield’s recent demise.

We’ve written on these pages before that it remains Australia’s most attended sport no one knows about and nothing in the last few weeks has dissuaded that notion.  

Unfortunately for all these steps forward, Speedway continues to find ways to regress by just being stuck in their old predictable ways.

Just when you think there’s some progressive thinking and opportunity for growth, old habits kick in and the sport as a whole takes a step back.

Missing this opportunity comes at the right time to take advantage of the platform that was on offer here.

Why the 7plus platform is a winner and no, this isn’t an ad..

The Seven network are going hard on their streaming platform and the results this summer have been phenomenal for the broadcaster.

The network has reported they’ve added more than 100,000 new users since the start of the current Border-Gavaskar test series, with a 230% jump in viewership to more than 2.2 million people tuning in via the digital offering across the series to date.

All of Seven’s Big Bash games – where ratings are up 30% – are on the app and in 2025 all of Seven’s AFL games will also be available digitally for the first time. It is becoming their #1 destination for live sport and they are pushing it harder than their main free-to-air channels.

The Title would have enjoyed crossover coverage with the Meguiar’s Bathurst 12 Hour coverage, also to be shown on the screens of Seven which would have offered legitimate lead in content for a motorsport centric audience of over half a million. Why would you opt out of that?

I’m not going to name names or throw stones at the decision makers here, that’s not the point and quite frankly I don’t really care.

And I’ll emphasize that I genuinely have no issue with Clay-Per-View; it has an audience and regular subscriber base that genuinely adds revenue to the back-end of the sport which is important, though I remain blown away people pay for one race meeting the same price you do for a month of Kayo.

It has a place – but the Australian Sprintcar Championship, what should be the gold standard and premier event on the calendar – is not it.

History has a precedent..

Frankly, this is nothing but another short-sighted call from an element of motorsport that routinely lacks a progressive and forward-thinking approach to being anything other than a disparate array of state-level competitions that occasionally come together for a big national event like the title.  

And as long as they operate like that it’s not going anywhere beyond where it is now and history backs that up.

Back in 1996, competitors within Australian Touring Car Racing realised they needed to think outside the box to grow their sport beyond what it had become and especially where it had plateaued.

Growth takes risks and in that scenario the risk was a guy called Tony Cochrane and a deal with Channel 10. The rest is history.  

I genuinely believe Sprintcar racing close to that point.

Without taking opportunities and risks – yes, even at the risk of some short-term revenue – it’s never going to be more than what it is. But it’s hard to be surprised at this development, really.

If you ever wonder why there isn’t a national Sprintcar series, despite the fact that the available competitor and crowd base would instantly make it one of Australia’s largest in any form of the sport, dirt track or otherwise, this is why.

Someone once told me that if you take one step back for every step forward, you’re just treading water.

Welcome to Sprint Car racing.

Going 100mph and with all the associated thrills and spills – but apparently still standing absolutely still.