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We both agree that racers are under-compensated, but your massive wall of text replies comparing skilled labor markets to unskilled ones is are unrealistic.
When you get to Red Bud, you owe me a cold one. Second round is on me.
There isn’t any. If the riders had a union they could fight it. Look at how the MLBPA has driven up salaries in baseball. But it’s unlikely that would ever happen.
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For most it's far easier to say "Feld is greedy."
As a rider, you create an online store that buyers can use to place an order for a t-shirt, hat, sticker pack, Etc.
At the races, you throw up a small advertising or marketing sign for the website letting the pit lizards know where they can go to order merch. On that same sign, you offer a 24 hour promotional code that is good for a discount, say 10% off, if they use the race day promo code. The code is only good for that race day and is only distributed to those that stop by the pits to see their favorite rider.
The pit lizards, now knowing they can buy a shirt from their favorite rider, whip out their cell phone, enter the promo code, and orders a shirt through the riders website. The Merch then ships to the buyers home a few days later....no physical exchange of goods or money is happening in the pits between fan and rider.
Even if they don't buy....offer to give them a free sticker or something if they visit the site on the spot, bookmark mark it, and/or share it on social.
We all know FELD has put a stranglehold on selling Merch at the races in the pits, but man, sometimes I think if these guys would just think outside of the box a little bit there are other ways around it.
The team was successful, and when business decisions were made then so was the operation of the team.
He is obviously a successful guy, and like all successful people has probably learned from many failures on the way.
If you've never failed, or if you view failure as negative then you are quite lucky!
I'm just pointing out that danger is not the determining factor on how much money someone receives for a 'job'. And MX/SX proves that, as there are people who are willing to pay for the opportunity to do it for such a low potential payout.
I don't know if racers are or aren't under compensated. My gut says that I'd like to see them make more and at least have medical coverage for the life-threatening/altering injuries that we see so much of. But from a "capitalism" standpoint, we have a willing payor for services (Promoter/AMA/FIM/etc.), and willing payees (riders), so the market is deciding what the going rate needs to be. Yes, Feld and MXSports have what look like near monopolies on the buyer sides of things, but there ARE options for guys if they decide that they don't want to race those series. And while we have some rules regulating monopolies, from a purely capitalistic standpoint there is nothing wrong with them. It's called "winning" in a purely capitalistic sense.
You asked if it would be greedy for the racers to ask for more. I don't think that it would be. But simply asking for it gives no reason for the powers that by to agree to do that. Why would you pay more for something that you can pay less for? Unless racers stop racing for ridiculously low purse and pay, then there is zero reason for the status quo to change one bit.
That's the real question. Are racers ready to stop racing and demand more compensation because the sport is dangerous and careers are relatively short, or will they continue to race for the paltry sums that the majority of them get and keep rewarding the folks who don't want to pay more? Do they feel that their skillset is irreplaceable enough that they have that leverage over the folks cutting the checks?
Maybe there are some some IV's being used for hydration, but much outside of that realm, I don't see the evidence of such claims.
C'mon man, the thing!
If these privateers can make money off selling merchandise, wouldn't it actually incentivize more upcoming privateers to try to make it to the fast 40 and into the night show to be able to sell merchandise....?
Look at Deano, that dude could just sell merch at the track and make more money than his factory win bonus and never have to even win a race for the rest of his life.....
Instead of selling out of the privateer’s trailer or box van, you should have proposed something like each privateer brings whatever amount of shirts they decide to try to sell to the merch vendor. The merch vendor gives them a receipt for the number of shirts, then after the event the privateer gets back whatever shirts don’t sell and the vendor keeps their ‘commission’ on the shirts that sold.
Example: Joe Privateer’s ‘team’ delivers 100 shirts to the merch vendor. The merch vendor sells 30 of them for $30 each. At the end of the event, Joe Privateer’s team receives 70 shirts back, and around $540 (60%) for the shirts sold. The merch vendor would keep about $360 (40%) for selling the shirts and accounting for them.
Something along those lines would have been a proposal that I would try, and it may be something that Feld or MXSports could explore with their venues in the future.
Pit Row
I was basically listening to two stoned dudes, one of which would awkwardly pause after being asked a question, pontificate about how to take motocross/supercross and turn it into a social media circus act. They actually discussed why there was so much focus on winning.
Imagine the goal of a race is to win...
I won't discuss the ped issues since I think those are just claims without evidence. Needless to say, I'm going to stick with PulpMX and Pingree's Whiskey Throttle Show for my podcast moto content.
In the end, it was definitely two guys shooting the shit high so of course conspiracy theories came up as well as wild takes and ideas. I do like what Jase is trying to do and it's coming from a good place for the sport. The same for Grondahl even though he is kinda out there.
I mean who wouldn't love to have a MX track community just like a golf course community?
Personalities like his may breed some interesting ideas, but they also burn bridges. The guy has way more money than me so what do I know...but it sure seems like you should keep your political opinions to yourself in business. And if you don't, then don't be surprised when a relationship is severed. Watching anything from Geico you would never think for a second that they are a liberally run corporation. Businesses like that don't give a crap left or right. They leverage what they can from which ever side is willing to give them the best return.
Wouldn't surprise me one bit if someone at Geico was getting some late night phone calls from a drunk/high Grondahl and they just decided it wasn't worth it anymore. Total speculation, I figure if they can do that for 3+ hours I can get away with it here as well.
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