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Only $10 for all 2026 SX, MX, and SMX series.
I've had a few beers now so I hope that made sense.......lol
But..by my estimation, they are making an easy $7mil/yr. and
that's just off ticket sales. Even if they double the purse, that's $5mil profit.
The hard part is getting the promoter to do it and keeping the promoter from pocketing the money.
Ain't that the truth!!!!! Raise fee's, they'll raise the purse $10K and pocket the rest. "administration fees"
lites night show $230.00
gas to get there $100-200..ranging depending on distance
or plane ticket fees
hotel $200
race fee $200
ama license $250
food $70
mechanic pass $40
haha, us privateers try our butts off every weekend for a negative net earning
but its not about the money its what we love to do and all we know how to do.
Try throwing in being a full time student at ASU monday to friday from 8 to 12.
Or having to drive to the race after work or school, and drinking a redbull and eating pb and j's to get to the stadium. haha with your dad and mechanic in a pickup truck
Or Riding injured cause for some of us, that 230 is all we get as a check throughout the week.
I broke my wrist the first lap of the san diego night show.
I finished racing the 6 lap heat and ended up getting 10 and they take 9 to the main.
My wrist hurt so bad i just wanted to get a cast on it, but i didnt wanna let down my mechanic or dad, so we toughed it out and rode the lcq with a broken wrist and i think i got 5th or 6th from a awful start.
Now Im bored on the internet lol.. with nothing to do until this cast comes off in a month.
I wouldn't know what id do if it wasn't for my parents backing me 150%, also warthog racing,trick stix, and motoland mx park
I couldn't thank them enough or show my gratitude fully
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2009 AMA Pro Road Racing Awards and Fees
AMA Pro American Superbike and AMA Pro Daytona SportBike Purses are the same for both classes and payment based upon total of event points earned from both event legs.
1st Place – $7,500.00 ($15,000.00 Daytona Only)
2nd Place thru 10th Place – $4,000.00 each ($5,000.00 each Daytona Only)
11th Place thru 20th Place – $3000.00 each ($5,000.00 each Daytona Only)
Superbike Entrant License and Annual Credential – $450.00
Superbike Rider License and Annual Credential – $450.00
Superbike Entry Fee – $250.00
Late Entry Fee – $350.00
National Pro Expert Entrant License (Daytona SportBike) and Annual Credential – $350.00
National Pro Expert Rider License (Daytona SportBike) and Annual Credential – $350.00
Daytona SportBike Entry Fee – $250.00
Late Entry Fee – $350.00
Like someone said, a riders union will never work. There will always be slower or less talented riders with money to take their place.....Could that be what is happening right now? Are most privateers budgets mainly supported by family?
Also, besides ticket sales, there is a lot of money from Monster, Parts Unlimited/THOR etc. etc. for sponsoring the series.
They should be paid accordingly especially in SX to how large the turnouts are.
'07 avg (USA Today) for a SX was almost 50,000 a race.
Shameful.
having seen both sides of the coin I know it's way more stress-free just to show up and race.
just thought I'd bring it up
carry on
Add a buck to the gate fee to double the purse, they raise the gate fee any old time if they need the money.
Tell me what would be the negative to that since you are all to concerned about the promoters expense?
The promoter of SX make good money and they should. You guys love to talk about the promoters risk and yes they do have risk. But what about the risk urseth727 takes when he lines up at a race and breaks a bone. What was his pay for what he risked!!!!!!!!!!! Tell me how much did he or anyone else who wasn't top ten make for their risk. They made nothing, they paid out of their pocket to do it. So don't get all self righteous for the big time promoter when its guys like urseth727 that are being taken advantage of.
Thank you urseth727 for having the heart and the balls to follow you dreams and I hope someday guys in your place will get paid for it. I was in you shoes in the early 90s and it makes me angry that this is still a problem.
Boo fucking hoo if you think the racers aren't getting enough. Does the guy working in the mailing room at Microsoft say that Bill Gates should pay him more...probably, but at the end of the day, if he doesn't like it...there's the door.
Does SX really need anyone outside the top 20? NO.
As for the adding money onto the tickets, have you ever really looked around at the spectators at a SX? How many of those do you think are REAL racers and/or REAL HARDCORE fans? It's a MUCH SMALLER percentage than you think. A large majority of those spectators carry a lot of similarity to the monster truck audience.
I know it makes you and everyone feel good thinking that everyone in the stadium has the same passion for the sport as you, but in reality they do not. They are there for a show, period. They want the lights, fire, hot chicks, personalities and big crashes.
Ticket prices are in line with other similar types of events and people already complain about the ticket costs, especially if it's a family or group, and on top of that people complain about the ticket costs in consideration of how the actual racing has scaled back and is so short.
Let's also not forget the economy, raising prices wouldn't be wise, no matter what.
Oh, and how you going to explain to the 50K people buying tickets that $XX.00 of the cost is going to purse before they buy? You know what most people will say? What the fuck is the rest of the money going to?
It all sounds good and makes you feel like you're doing or saying something significant, but you're not thinking it through (don't feel bad, it's a common occurrence around here).
BTW, add a dollar to tickets, you also add to the tax and service fees based upon that ticket price.
So answer the question, what's it cost to run the show and how much profit are they allowed to make?
Increase the payouts, and maybe charge more, reduce services,
or just make less profit.
A larger purse, should just be part of doing business. The rest will fall into place.
I've posted my gross figure. Educated guesses mostly and I'm sure there are some expenses I missed. But the revenue I chose was ticket sales only, no other revenue sources.
RISK???? What freakin risk? There is attendance data for years to limit that risk. I'm sure they aren't that stupid that if they foresaw limited attendance, that they couldn't cut out the FLUFF stuff and save some cash.
Explain this. Why do you have to WIN the lites class to make a couple hundred bucks more than a guy in the SX class just making the night show?
Why is the lites purse roughly 4 1/2 times LESS than the SX class, is there less RISK for those riders? Is there 4 1/2 times more cost to run a SX class bike than a lites bike?
A less than full gate is a rare thing.
Motocross is show business, I don't think it is any less fair than say the
music industry
movies
or the circus.
The bottom dwellers always have to pay up.
If you've got tons of skill you move directly to the front of the line.
This is the way to weed out the weak, non-earners out of an organization.
If you can't come up with the dough, find another profession.
I don't fully agree with this logic but thats the way it works,
but if the $$$ goes away, so does our sport.
Why do opening acts make so much less than the "headliner" at a concert? Does it not cost them the same to get to the concert?
Come up with a better analogy.
Pit Row
Like I said before...the riders DO have a choice...
I'm for equal pay and more pay for the racers. I'm all for a nice profit for the promoters too.
Seems like some lean to more profit for the "man".
It will not happen anyway, until the riders themselves demand it.
IMO, many are operating on this subject solely on emotion, not business financials, which is why I requested you (and others) try as best you can to detail the expenses that goes into a SX.
Finally, a big misconception in regards to AMA SX and MX "purses" and the purses for say a NASCAR race or a golf event is that their numbers take into account ALL of the bonuses and contingencies...ALL OF IT, as well as money paid TO NASCAR and PGA for the rights to air that event used for a portion of the purse. (Trust me, no one is paying the AMA or Feld to air SX)
If you added in all the OEM contingencies and contingencies from Dunlop, Bridgestone, the oil companies and other products, the AMA purse would be SIGNIFICANTLY MORE....probably 10x at least
Why does our sport list their purse like this when no one else does?
I have no clue
But.. what the heck. It's Friday.
1. Facility rental.I know for a recent production it was $275,000 and who knows what it could range to across the country and what the usage is. That included facility rental, an extremely huge security force, all labor, insurance. So 275k x 16= $4.5mil but let's bump that up as Calif. rounds may be a lot more, so $7mil should cover it?
Concessions can be negotiated as a % of profit, or worked into the rental. Parking fee's are all the venue's.
2. Workers. I'll use Sondra's figures of 30 FT, and 40 event workers.
I would say Feld has roughly 30+ people from Chicago there, and another 30-40 contracted labor there.
I'll be generous and give the FT's an avg. salary of $75k. and will pay the 40 event workers $250/day x 2 days.. That is a total cost of: $2.2 mil for FT's, and $340K for workers. Total $2.6 Mil.
Yes, I know there are a lot of volunteers, including flaggers/track crew and even FELD workers, minimal cost, not included.
All expenses for the travel, lodging, meals. I'll take 40 people. That's a $2,000 per person per event cost x 16= round up to $1.5mil.
3. Dirt wurx, no clue but for arguments sake: $960K ($60K per event), lets round up to $1mil.
Heavy equipment, usually donated in exchange for advertising. That's how it was years ago, could have changed? But let's say. $160K for all rounds. $10k per round, which is generous estimation.
4. Fireworks.. again, just a guess. $10K/event x 16= $160K
5. Medical staffing. What portion is covered by sponsorship? Even so, lets say $1-2mil for all expenses, salary, travel, food, lodging, etc.
6. Advertising. Don't have a guess, I'd assume that it's either a break even expense or an actual revenue maker if you count what advertisers pay them.
7. Purse. $94K x 16 rounds= $1.5mil
8. TV Production. I find it hard to believe that FELD pays for SPEEDS/CBS production crew. I don't have resources to know the ins and outs of all that. Even if they did, I'd assume they get a great rate as it's probably packaged with all of FELDS events somehow or someway. I doubt it's in the loss column.
9. Trucking crew/travel, etc.: $750K all events
So where are we at?
You can fill in what is missing. I've lumped a lot of your categories together. You can also tell me how wrong my figures are.
Ticket only revenue: approx. $21mil
Expenses:approx $16mil
Roughly 35% profit.
Missing, the 17th round, which is Daytona and not a FELD production.
Do you really think that Daytona would never give up this round because it's a money loser? No, it's a money maker. So 1 round, they must make a nice profit or they would have dumped it long ago. I don't have that attendance figure handy, but let's just guess it at 45,000 at $25/ticket.Just a bit over $1mil. So if that is so, they must be making a profit, so expenses can't be as much as I've stated. Although, I will assume Daytona's overhead is much less than FELDS who keep a 30 FT staff, according to Sondra.
Guys on MotoNews took up a collection for the privateers. If you gave you received a T shirt. I have 2. Many of you knock TFS but his likeness was the prize. WWR popped up after the collections and the $$ was given to them. A group of us ran the WWR donation booth at High Point that year.......and several other nationals. DJKC (the guy in the WW cape) poped up here on Vital a few weeks ago and you guys gave him shit for not being a core MX/SX supporter.........he was at every booth donating his time and $$ to get there!
BTW......who gave the most $$$? Jonathan Beasley walked up at High Point and stuffed a $100 bill into that jug!
Privateer riders should have the right to sell their own T shirts at events to help support their racing addiction.
RC should be racing...oops, its practice now. He's 4th fastest at Atlanta as of 1145 pdt.
Race tomorrow 11 pdt. Go RC.
Why would all those yrs AMA Pro Racing kept SX? Cause it was not making anything?
And when they didn't include it in the initial DMC deal, made it look they wanted to keep their bread/butter. Least imo.
Understand the TV thing (NFL gets huge dough of the big 4 as well that pays much of the bills) and the big dollar sponsors golf, etc. get.
But now we got Poker; degenerate gamblers getting way more coverage than SX that has always at certain venues drawn 60,000 and upwards.....
'nuff said. Everyone wants the sport to progress for everyone involved.
And we are a real sport; not entertainment only. Just chaps my hide.
The top riders in the world are not riding motocross, why is this? Not enough money for the risk.
Supercross is having a hard time filling a gate so they have to ask the lites riders to ride 450 class when they aren't racing on their coast.
US open always has the top guys at the race, why is that? Kick ass purse is why, and why does a small one off event blow away a supercross purse? Add up the costs to the promoter and answer that question!
Before long only the top 10 will be out there racing, I don't care how its done they just need to up the purse for 5th through last place in supercross.
Again add a buck to the ticket price, you don't have to tell those purchasing the ticket why the ticket went up. Tickets go up all the time.
Whats your suggestion to get the purse up if you don't agree with this approach.
1) staffing.....everyone works for free tshirts and pit ho's!
2) rental......$200,000
3) transportation......$500
4) track building.....$35,000
5) subs.....again they work for free
6) lodging......8 people in one indian roach motel $29
7) security?.....hes the truck driver
8) everything else.....$999
projected profit: $2 mill per event
now privateer rider: everything spent $2000 per event
income $225
projected profit: -$1775
you notice the differance? one really is making money putting on the show and the guy WHO IS THE SHOW.......is only making it because hes pimpin his dad out. but then again there are those who are killin it in the cash department, both of those guys will retire well!
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