What's Next For Key West?
 

Offshore races will return to the city at the end of the road next year. But who will produce them? https://www.offshoreonly.com/article...t-for-key-west

From the OSO home page.

outsider looking in but seems a lot of shake ups happened this season. with small numbers and the clear yet unclear victory ordeal its not appealing for over seas teams. they should work rules with each other and umi. don't have to be one big happy family just play nice between the originations.

if SBI loses Key West, how long will it hold on??

What is best for the rest of the year seems like who should get it.

Key west is 1 week a year but there is many others races and towns that enjoy racing in their back yard. Having more separate organizers just seems counter to growing the sport at all.

As the prop turns. What would be interesting would be if the organizations that want to bid explained what they would offer to the racers and see if they could get some commitments on boat count and who. That might help them decide who they should give the race too.

That would be to smart LOL

Most important, will it be the same Veteran's Day weekend, or will in move on the calendar? I need to start planning. I hear a race boat is for sale near me. :boat: :D :drink:

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In its heyday drug money, celebrities, some legit millionaires, a variety of interesting equipment and big water kept big budget offshore racing going. IMSA sportscar racing had a similar business model during the same timeframe. IMSA survived and is strong, why did offshore racing fail ?

Attendance and TV revenue! You can charge fans to attend a race and easily televise a car race, boats can be done but not as easy and the spectators are free.

Look at F1 in Texas, place seats over 100,000 people....more than the huge Cowboys stadium! 100K+ fans buying seats, buying beers/food, t shirts at every event. Hell imagine just the parking revenue for the week! Boat racing gets NONE of that revenue stream except maybe a few wet pit passes and maybe t shirts. Boat racing is a bad model for profits and I'd bet a week in Key West costs teams more money than running an Indy team for a week. Boats have 2 engines to break, boats burn way more fuel. Cars can crash and certainly burn through tires but I'd bet a bad day on a big powerboat hurts worse than a bad car racing day.

While I'm not sure how the numbers compare—automobile racing is frightfully expensive as well—here's a data point for you: GEICO, the company, tracks the return numbers of people who sign up for insurance during events in which Miss GEICO, the team, participates. Not only is Key West an expensive place to be for a week, it provides a poor return on investment based on that sponsor's metrics. (Englewood Beach, I was told, provided more than 10 times the return AND costs the team less money to attend.)

Though there may have been some politics involved and message being sent to SBI, that was the explanation I got from ALL members of the Miss GEICO team owners group for not participating this year.