Instead of competition between individual stock car drivers, the Team Racing Auto Circuit (TRAC) would field two-car teams based in major television markets and running in up to 24 races each season, capped with playoffs and a championship.
Jon Pritchett, an executive with Team Sports Entertainment Inc., which founded the new league, said TRAC will not seek to pull fans away from NASCAR, but instead attract new fans drawn to the team concept of stock car racing.
?gOur goal is to get new people interested in team stock car racing,?h Pritchett said at a press conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, to unveil the new league. ?gIt's very expensive to try to steal market share.?h
Fairport, New York-based Team Sports Entertainment earlier in the day closed on its acquisition of Maxx Motorsports Inc, a marketing company focused on motorsports. The company also changed its name from Logisoft Corp, and spun off its Logisoft Computer Products Corp and eStorefronts.net Corp units.
Team Sports Entertainment, which trades on the Nasdaq bulletin board system, received $7.125m in equity funding and is seeking a new stock symbol. Its shares were up 5 cents at $1.88 a share in mid-afternoon trading.
The new league will have to run hard to catch up with NASCAR, which has made stock car racing the fastest-growing US spectator sport. NASCAR received a boost this year with the start of a $2.6bn television contract, and has seen speedways open across the country as its fan base expands.
In contrast to NASCAR, which is privately held and conducts races between independently sponsored drivers, the teams racing on the new TRAC circuit will be owned by league investors. Similar structures have been used by Major League Soccer, the Women's National Basketball Association and Arena Football 2.
``If you invest at the league level, you are investing in the sport as a whole as opposed to any particular market,'' said Joe Leccese, partner in the New York law firm Proskauer Rose LLP, which advised the league on its centralised structure.
The league will locate teams in major television markets and seek a television contract with cable and network outlets. Former CBS Sports president Robert Wussler serves on its board, and former NBA executive Carl Scheer is an advisor.
But the real test will be in attracting top-notch drivers, and high-profile athletes and entertainers as team owners.
?gI think it's a great concept and I think it will work. It's the greatest thing since axle grease,'' said NASCAR racing legend Cale Yarborough, whose total of 83 wins is the fifth best in the history of the league.
Reuters
Drafting on the surging popularity of NASCAR stock car racing, a New York sports marketing firm unveiled plans on Tuesday for a racing league with up to a dozen teams set to begin competing in 2003.
