ryan, your sponsors should be proud of what you do. i applaud you on your hard work. keep it up and you will land a big sponsor, or a big ride bro. i have watched you over the years, and man your doing a great job. we started this just like you 18 years ago
mike stancombe

If they are racing side by side .... Id watch :cool:



So how do they decide who to root for? Duh. My point was about meeting the racers .. granted not every racer is going to be liked ... I can name a few Im not crazy about but my decision to like or to dislike them is made by meeting them. All of them. You cant decide who is likable and who is an ass based on which boat they are running or whose stickers are on it. At least I couldnt .....


Product recognition is product recognition. In a perfect world it would be great to get that one sponsor who would sponsor an event for $50,000 but maybe its more realistic to find 5 sponsors to sponsor the event for $10,000 a piece.


I keep posting about competitive stories but I dont think you notice ..... the boats not big enough for you to see? and you think Im blind .... :D

Exactly. Still independently owned.

Guys,

This is possibly the most positive thread is the racing milling area's history when it comes to this topic. We all have varying opinions which is great. For Mike A., T2x, Stancombe, and others to come on here, we need to listen to them. As I said in a earlier post, you dont have to like each other to do business together. All of us see that our sport is going backwards instead of forward.

Bottom line, this thread is positive and I hope it continues, but we can talk and BS till the cows come home. What is step 1 in fixing this sport? Is it unification? Is it a move to make each race site a better show? I dunno, you guys tell me, but we need a course of action for this to start coming to fruition or if you prefer, we can make this post 100 pages long and still keep it positive with nothing achomplished. Keep in mind that once a game plan is established then it would need to go before JC, Billy(Mercury), and Smitty to be put into action.

Once again whats step 1?

Trent

Question #1

As a racer ask yourself why do you support the organization of your choice??

Question #2

What can I do to make my oragnzation better?

Question#3

Does my organization have a vested intrest in my team?

Question#4

Where will my team be in 2 years??

You can certainly add more to this list, But as a group,
only you can stop yourself from achieving your goals!

To Mr. T2x,
We could go back and forth till the cows come home, one point that is being missed is that my friends are the racers and our fans who come to the races. They are truly all that matters to me. I've learned a long time ago, through the many ventures I've undertaken in my life is that the BIG sponsors and TV people and music industry people and the lot are around for one reason and one reason only, to ride your wave. When things are IN, they are around like ants at a picnic, things fall of a little, there off looking for the next picnic.
I've set up deals and invested a lot of money courting the right people in Big Business only to have them jump ship for another better paying job and I'm back to square one. You can keep the Big Guys, I prefer real people, a lot of small sponsors who will be there next year and the year after and so on. It's real easy to have some High Roller or Big Corp. right a check for the whole shabang but when they pull the plug or move on there's a Big hole to fix. And as far as there demands? Thats what can get you in trouble, they have you drooling for there check and can get the smartest of us to promise the world and put your neck in a noose for a labor of love, all the time people are commenting on how much your putting in your pockets and why your aligning yourself with so and so. Been there.
And yes, your operatives have givin you accurate information, our Fountain is based in Patchogue. We test there, live there and I thought it would be real cool to have all our friends come and race here. Organizing this event has givin me a whole new respect for guys who I already had tons of respect for. It's more work then I ever thought it would be, but with the backing and help of Smitty and Augie and the OPA crew. It will be stupendous!! Am I making money? lol. Spending a lot but what the heck, If its a hit we can do it again. This is what racing means to me. And oh yeah, I asked my wife about using to much water, she said it would be like flooding it with constant negative thoughts and not enjoying the true simple beauty of racing.( ok I made that up). I have a feeling your going to be impressed with racing this season.

Louie

F-1 I didnt steal "till the cows come home" lol I must have been typing when you were posting.:D

Originally Posted by T2x
What you clearly don't get is that fans not only root FOR some racers, it is equally important that they root AGAINST others. In life there is yin and yang.........

Originally Posted by RG3
So how do they decide who to root for? Duh. My point was about meeting the racers .. granted not every racer is going to be liked ... I can name a few Im not crazy about but my decision to like or to dislike them is made by meeting them. All of them. You cant decide who is likable and who is an ass based on which boat they are running or whose stickers are on it. At least I couldnt .....

well if your like most of beer drinking monday morning quarterback sports fans out there (and their women....its simple you like the big colorfull boat that goes fast, catches air and wins alot, and you hate the ugly boat thats trying to beat him, on the other hand, your an underdog rooting kind of guy and cheer for the ugly boat while hating the the ine that looks like technicolor vomit.

For Offshore Racing to accell, it must be treated as a business point blank. MA had the right business plan and has brought the sport to the strongest level it had ever experieanced.

First it has to have a strong plan on what it needs to exceed. Then you need funding to acheive the goals of the company. To get the funding, you will need a strong marketing plan. Last you will need a accounting plan to hold all of this together.

We need to look in the past of what has happened, what didn't work, what has worked, and create a new plan for the "business".

Funding will be needed but to get the funding a STRONG plan has to be in place for sponsors to look at and it must be attractive to the sponsor. It has to be a plan that the sponsor will excell from and that he will be proud to be a part of. He will NOT want to be part of a bunch of kids throwing tantrums every time he or she doesn't get their way. This makes the sponsor run away laughing as fast and hard as they can. It MUST be done proffesionaly.

To get the funding we need a GOOD maketing plan to attract the sponsors. Exposure.....from TV, Radio, Charities, Events, anything it takes to get the public to notice and get their attention.

For a business to be sucessful you will need good employees. To get good employees you must pay good wages. Remember, you can't make money if you don't spend money. Funding once again.

This team of employees are so to speak, the Corperate Executives that put all of this together and create the plan for the business.

Last you will need a good accounting plan to keep this business together for the future of the business. And it needs to be treated as it is...A BUSINESS !!!!

Build this business, a sucessful business and we as racers will get sponsors to help our teams grow to sucess also.

Funding might be acheived by creating a Limited Partner Corp. ??? With multiple investors owning the corp. ???

This in my opinion is the ONLY way Offshore Racing will survive and be a sport where we are not dumping thousands of dollars into no more than bragging rights and a $6 dollar trophey.

For the past two years we have tried to keep Factory 1 racing alive. Factory racing is a VERY important class that SHOULD keep performance boat manufatures involved with professional racing. Why the other manufactures have not joined us ??? I don't know. Maybe they don't see a strong business plan that they can excell from. But build a strong business that we can all benifit from and you will see manufactures begin to take notice and step up. I have lost thousands and thousands of dollars trying to keep Factory racing alive. And what do we get for it, " Well you only raced one other boat". People, can't you see why I did it? It wasn't for racing just one boat, so you say, and become World Champions. It was to keep Factory Racing alive !!!!! I could care less about flags and tropheys. I want this sport to survive and be prosperous for all of us. I love this sport and I beleive we can build a business that we can ALL benifit from.

Dave

Trent,

Step 1 = OSS needs to go now. It has no long term chance to survive and likely will be gone in a year or two at most anyway based on past history. The founders/owners figured that out which is why they left quietly leaving Billy standing there not realizing he is the one going down with the ship.

There is no reason for Billy to have any say. He is not a sanctioning body owner. OSS is not even a sanctioning body as I recall. Turn it into an owner's group and be done with it. The only thing OSS members need to do is race at SBI. That is it. JC is not going to negotiate with Billy or anyone at OSS. There is no reason for him to (though I certainly do not speak for him) as he knows OSS is going down - he has seen it before - it has no leverage and it has nothing he needs to run his business including an engine supplier.


Step 2 = There needs to be one national group with one schedule, one national champion, etc. Make it easy for people to follow. The sport does not work - as a major business - and will never work with multiple sanctioning organizations. For cripes sake all you have to do is look at the last 20 years for evidence of that FACT. SBI/APBA is the one.

Start there and then you can begin to have a legitimate discussion about what to do next. Until that happens the sport as a professional business will continue its downward spiral.