Weekend Offroad Sports Stats....

Adding to my ongoing reference of major broadcast TV ratings for various offroad racing events I think I'm going to try and begin referencing recent offroad racing events (primarily desert racing and stage rally) and look at some key items such as entry lists, entry costs, length of race, $ per racing mile cost and what, if any, major media coverage was present or forthcoming.

The first of these comes from this past weekend when you had both Rally America and NASA Rally with smaller, regional style events and you had the season ending BITD Henderson 250 out in Nevada.  All were geographically distinct enough not to draw competitors from one another, though at least one Show Me Rally competitor had originally entered the Rally Florida event before switching events.

The Show Me Rally saw a fair amount of change over its comparable '13 event.  Moving to a later date, changing locations and name, new roads and more still saw similar entry numbers to last year, while overall stage mileage and a $100 increase in entry fees (in all cases entry fees are based upon the LOWEST possible fee at each event) were also present.

The NASA event was the new Rally Florida down at the flatland of the FIRM and drew 15 entries (nearly half of which DNF'd which I found surprising given the assumed lack of major trees and rocks there!)  at 60 stage miles in length this was a full single day event and hopefully sets the stage (pun intended) for the FIRM to host a full points paying event in '15 as stated on the facilities website.  I just hope that FL isn't too far away from the majority of Rally drivers in the US and can draw a higher entry count...still, the $5400 minimum in entry fees (likely significantly higher as certainly not all entries here were of the "early" variety and thus qualifying for the lowest fee) is on par with what the Perryville Farm and Forest Rally brought in the year before and should bode well for the continuation of this race.

Lastly there is the Henderson 250.  The desert event saw UTVs move into the same race as the more limited cars, trucks and buggies vs. being thrown in with the bikes and quads as they were in previous years.  Regardless, the entry numbers for the more limited racers appear to have declined from '13.  Without access to the supplemental forms from '13 I can't determine if there has been a price increase that might have caused this.  Moving forward we'll try and track race to race and year to year trends for the various series.  At $600 a pop for the more limited classes you have about $33K in income for BITD from just the two lap (each of 80 miles) classes.



If you have any recommendations as to other simple info items to add to this breakdown or other feedback I'd love to hear it as I'm not racing the overwhelming majority of these events and don't know what info might be most useful to racers/participants.


Rally America:
Show Me Rally 2014--22 entries, $350, 47 Stage miles in length, No TV or Internet coverage, $7.5 per mile

(somewhat comparable event with similar organizers, location, sanctioning)  Perryville Farm and Forest Rally--23 entries, $250, 36 Stage miles in length, $6.9 per mile




NASA Rally:

Rally Florida at the FIRM--15 entries, $360, 60 Stage miles in length, Spike Channel's Offroad Extreme program was there filming the race for an upcoming broadcast, $6 per mile

(no comparable historical event, new event for 2014)




BITD Desert Race:
Henderson 250--$600, 55 entries in the classes running two laps, 160 Race course miles in total length, Broadcast on MavTV on 1/19/15 at 9:30PM Pacific, $3.8 per mile

2013 Henderson 250--61 entries in the classes running two laps

Much of the drop in the limited class entries is attributed to the competition of a MORE Toys For Tots desert race in Barstow, CA this same weekend and drew 70 entries itself--though this occurred in '13 as well when there were 54 entries at the MORE Holiday 200.

So if anything, you might say that there was a shift in the limited classes AWAY from BITD and TOWARDS the MORE series event.  In 2014 it appears that the limited class racers PREFERRED to run the MORE event vs. the BITD race.  In all however it was a net gain for the limited classes between these two events with 115 entries of this type in '13 between the two events and 125 entries in '14, an increase of near 9%.