Posts
288
Joined
7/15/2009
Location
Auburn, ME
US
Edited Date/Time
10/13/2020 2:08pm
Has anyone seen this?
https://www.change.org/p/american-motocross-association-make-motocross-great-again-b3510e65-b0c6-4f6f-834d-edfd87da45c6
Saw it shared on Facebook along with a photo of Jerry Robin in Make Motocross Great Again gear and graphics. Lots of privateers out there frustrated and struggling - many of which who've gotten injured and the sport has done nothing to help them. It's sad when you look at it deeper than the broadcasted show.
Justin Barcia won $12,000 for winning A1 this year and Adam Enticknap won $1070.00 for placing last in the LCQ. What about the 250 riders? I don't know why anyone would try to compete knowing the costs associated with this level of racing. Denny Hamlin won over $2,000,000 for winning the Daytona 500... I get NASCAR is bigger but this is ridiculous. Risk everything - get nothing.
Isn't the AMA suppose to protect the riders? Apparently rape is an AMA Value Add
Glad to see someone is making some noise on this issue!!
https://www.change.org/p/american-motocross-association-make-motocross-great-again-b3510e65-b0c6-4f6f-834d-edfd87da45c6
Saw it shared on Facebook along with a photo of Jerry Robin in Make Motocross Great Again gear and graphics. Lots of privateers out there frustrated and struggling - many of which who've gotten injured and the sport has done nothing to help them. It's sad when you look at it deeper than the broadcasted show.
Justin Barcia won $12,000 for winning A1 this year and Adam Enticknap won $1070.00 for placing last in the LCQ. What about the 250 riders? I don't know why anyone would try to compete knowing the costs associated with this level of racing. Denny Hamlin won over $2,000,000 for winning the Daytona 500... I get NASCAR is bigger but this is ridiculous. Risk everything - get nothing.
Isn't the AMA suppose to protect the riders? Apparently rape is an AMA Value Add
Glad to see someone is making some noise on this issue!!
Check out this song about it that came out. (https://youtu.be/RDd66j6WVlw)
Then i saw this post from a rider the other day. Alot of stuff man, Noise needs to be made
Riders: Without us, Feld can not put on the Circus
Feld: Without us, the Circus animals have no tent to perform under and no way to make money
Feld needs 40 - 50% occupancy to break even at the typical SX.... so if they do end up at 80-100% with an extra 10-15k people over the break even point, they’re looking at 200-500k profit from each event.
It’s been a long time coming that the riders flex back and take more from the ring leaders at Feld.
The Shop
The pulpmx interview with Chris Canning this past week was pretty interesting. He cleaned up at the Maine Event and Baja Brawl in consecutive weekends and made way more money than he would have busting his balls to race the nationals.
A lot of local series still offer 150%-200% payout in 250A and 450A. Maybe we will soon get to a point where all the guys that aren't on factory/salary rides just stop showing up to the nationals and start to make their money at the local level. It would be good for the sport at a grassroots level, pump money into the local moto community, and force the promotors to take a good hard look at what a series would be like with half empty gates.
Maybe that would change some things. Maybe it wouldn't. That's just my thought on the matter.
I'm not going to go through every manufacturers contingency payout to dive into it. But 10th place at an MX national or Supercross gets $1K in Kawasaki contingency. 10th place in a 450 main is $2,450 ($965 in the 250 class). $3K isn't going to cut it for a guy humping it across the country every week in a sprinter van and taking showers at the truck stop.
Having said that, it is the riders decision to keep chasing the dream.
Ultimately, it's not an economically sustainable option for the riders that aren't on a factory ride and I'd venture to guess that 99.999% of the people on this forum have zero clue what an increase in the purse would do to MX Sports or Feld from a financial standpoint. Especially in 2020. So ultimately, it comes down to 1 of 3 things.
1) Non-factory riders continue to show up to the races as they always have and nothing changes.
2) Non factory riders stop showing up to the races, ratings drop, attendance drops, and promotors are forced to increase the purse if it's fiscally sustainable for them to do so
3) Non factory riders stop showing up to the races, the gates are half full, but ratings and attendance stay the same or potentially improve. The promotors keep the purse money they now aren't spending and their margin increases.
I disagree.
There’s more money funneling through this sport than people think and industry guys know it but they can’t rock the ship because they’ll lose their career. There are a few greedy players at the top of this industry and they do a good job masking themselves.
As F1 is motorsports king, it's intersting to see what they're doing. The F1 changes should result in a leveled and more competitive field ala Nascar, this should increase revenue, expectators etc and reduce the salary gap.
If that becomes a proven better business model, it's likely that other motorsports will copy, that being said no one buys F1/Nascar cars to be a weekend warrior.
You want a fair playing field in an individual sports that pays relatively well to all that are good? Go watch Tennis.
A little more investment back into the racers would actually grow the sport instead of shrink it. Youth parents everywhere are chasing a unicorn and if their kid is any good, they get scoffed up by some amateur team with factory support and if they continue to do well, an action sports agent will seduce their family into signing their career money away for the chance to be the next RC, JS, RD, ET, etc. and they fall for it. Next thing you know, little Jimmy has a career-ending injury and his whole program is dropped leaving the racer and his family with nothing to show for everything they sacrificed to get to this point.
It’s corrupt from get-go but everyone is eating it up because they don’t know there isn’t a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. They share the same passion we all do and they dream big. But that’s all it is for most - just a bullshit dream and it needs to change or this sport we love is in trouble.
I get where Jerry is coming from though. TV money should trickle down a bit more as a equalizer.
Pit Row
Motocross is not political, I try to escape what’s going on in our country today by enjoying moto, and I don’t want any politics one way or the other in my face when I watch racing.
What main sponsor will sign on to Factory Connection Honda if there is a political message one way or the other?
Pretty sure them sandwiches don’t sit too well when their only rider crashes, gets hurt, or DNF’s
I don’t really get why everyone thinks these guys are in it for the money. I’ve raced with past and present guys. Not all but the majority of these guys come from money or someone who is willing to foot the large bill. Yea some travel in vans but a sprinter that’s 50k?? The modern day privateer is not the same as it use to be.
You can post the documents here of course.
Take a four rider team into account. How much do you think it would cost to have the semi for ten years on the circuit versus four box vans? With around 50,000 miles a year placed on them, drivers, fuel, tires, hotels, wear and tear, rebranding costs with changing sponsors.
I'm behind it in theory, but while all this Covid stuff is going on? It's probably not the time to think you're going to get major change done.
You see, Kenneth Feld and Davey Coombs have a giant, rural warehouse together where they keep all their secret dirt bike racing promoter profits stacked to the ceiling like Escobar.
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