NHMS’ Toyota Wheels Deal
By Lou Modestino
Buy a ticket for the July 3 New England 300, a NASCAR Sprint Cup race, at New Hampshire Motor Speedway between April 1-15 and you will get a chance to win one of ten Toyotas. The tickets are for turn 2 and are priced between $49-$79. If you prefer turn 3 the tickets are priced between $70-$110. Previously, if you had purchased tickets from Feb. 24 and March 5 for $60-$100, the buyer would have received 10 entries into the drawing. Another promo between March 6 and March 31 for the Concord grandstand for tickets priced for $70 and $110 got you 5 entries into the drawing.
NHMS is offering a total of 43 guaranteed winners. Among the other prizes beyond the Toyota automobiles there’s a Sylvania Home Entertainment package, a year’s supply of Miller Lite, a year’s supply of Coke products, a year’s supply of Gifford Farms ice cream and a Team O’Neil Rally Driving School package.
It’s no secret that selling tickets to the NASCAR race weekend’s across the country has been quite a chore since the 2008 Great Recession. Obviously, NHMS is trying to entice race fans and others to come back to the track for that weekend. It all sounds like a great opportunity for the race fans and others interested in the Cup events.
Giveaways are nothing new to entice ticket buyers to sporting events, especially motorsports fans. We can recall where short tracks offered to raffle off the pace car at the end of the racing season. All it took was to buy a ticket to the track during the season.
Going way back though we can recall what former owner Bob Bahre did when he owned Oxford Plains Speedway in western Maine. Bahre bought the then-lacking in creature comforts track out in the boonies of the Pine Tree State in 1964. Bob spent a lot of money on the track’s rough infrastructure during a long period.
In 1973, Bob felt that racing at Oxford wasn’t very good, and he just had to give his customers some incentive to come to his race track. He went up to Bessey Motors a Chrysler-Plymouth dealer in the adjacent town of So. Paris and cut a deal to purchase 10 Plymouth Dusters. The cars had to be given away between mid-June and Labor Day which was the busiest part of the racing season. All a fan had to do was purchase an adult ticket for a chance to drive home in a brand new Plymouth Duster on that Saturday night..
That promo was successful. In fact even if there was threatening weather fans still made an effort to get to the track. The fans’ rationale was to buy a ticket because the odds improved in their favor on a weather-threatening race night.
After he sold Oxford Plains, Bob Bahre built and owned NHMS and then sold that venue to Bruton Smith’s Speedway Motor Sports (SMI), a publicly traded company a few years back. Not one to rest on his laurels, Bahre yearned for another challenge. This time it was to get the State of Maine to legalize casino gambling. With his partners, Bob was successful in getting the legislation passed and built the Black Bear Casino on Pidgeon Hill in Oxford not far from the Poland Springs town line.
About a year after it opened, just last week, Bahre and company sold the casino to Churchill Downs Corp. for $160 million according to reports in all of the Maine daily newspapers. What Bahre will do next is anyone’s guess?
Check Jayski.com to see what’s happening in the world of racing on TV this weekend.