GuyIncognito

the expiration of the existing TV contracts is going to be an interesting event.

tcsracing1

so much for the GT3R in IMSA....

Hopefully it will have better luck in PWC.

Such a nice car too.

lordpantsington

Can someone elaborate on what S.A. has done specifically to erode ALMS?

Nizer

Suspect more will be showing up in PCA Club Racing....

Streak

Well for starters it no longer exists and he was running the show. So there's that.

He couldn't negotiate his way out of a paper bag so ALMS live events basically got taken off TV for 3 years and the "4 ways to watch" only worked for a very few Internet/cable providers or overseas. Anyone with satellite tv (about 60% of America) couldn't watch at all. The races were boiled down to a highlight clip show days later. It was a total cluster fk

Not getting the series on TV for 3 years killed it and the France's saw an opportunity to acquire the series.

Guess who somehow landed at the top of the new racing series? Atherton. And he still can't negotiate a decent broadcast package. Fix doesn't air the endurance races consistently and often preempts coverage for ANY other sport on TV. If they do air it the viewer has to flip between channels and the Internet (again not available everywhere) to see the whole race and even then Fox may not show the start or the finish.

It's Atherton's disaster through snd through.

Veloce Raptor

Streak beat me to it. And for all their faults, the Frances weren't involved in Atherton's debacle.

lordpantsington

I wondered if people were still grumbling about the TV package. Anything else?

For those that hated the streaming ESPN3 coverage, now that you have your live TV coverage back, how do you like it? I think it is garbage.

joeykid

I think the overriding problem is a lack of interest in the series. They merged two series, Grand Am and ALMS. ALMS was failing miserably with too many classes that made no sense and cars that looked the same and could not be visually classed while Grand Am was popular with two classes, prototypes and sports cars. Bottom line, too may classes was complicated even with color coding and was not fun to watch. Somehow, the decision was made to use the business model of the failing series when they were merged under IMSA. As TV and sponsors go away there will be more and more unhappy players. They used the wrong platform, business 101. As PWC now is attempting to accommodate all comers, they may head down a similar path. However, the Sprint race format does give them the opportunity to split up the racing.

NaroEscape

I have to disagree here somewhat with the notion that Grand Am was more popular than ALMS. The biggest difference was that GA had a decent TV contract (a la NASCAR's control over SPEED then Fox) and ALMS didn't/couldn't. Ever go to either/both series races in person? ALMS races FAR out sold GA races. Here are two examples:

- Couple years before the merger we were at Daytona for the 24 - the 50 year celebration one. The former head of GA marketing was/is a good friend of ours. He was excited because attendance was nearly 50,000 fans!! Excellent.
Just a few months earlier we were at Petit LeMans where the attendance was 124,000 fans... A normal Petit had attendance 2.5 times the 50th anniversary of Daytona 24!!

- The year just before the merger, GA decided to run a race at Road Atlanta. We went to that - there was nobody there...MAYBE 20,000 people? They didn't even bother opening most of the concession stands. The ENTIRE parking area around 6-7 was empty, where it's usually packed with RV's and such. Same year Petit had again over 120,000 people...

While I do blame Atherton for the TV coverage debacle and ultimate demise of ALMS, some of it was out of his hands. NASCAR controlled the TV broadcasters that had any interest in sportscar racing at the time (SPEED/FOX). I also think he was kinda sold a bill of goods with ESPN/ABC on that deal too, but partly because they didn't do their due diligence on the deal. I was on the media call when it was announced (as were many) and it was obvious Atherton had no clue what he had ACTUALLY signed up for...

Also keep in mind, ALMS didn't exactly go out of business...it was owned by Don Panoz and he SOLD it, along with Road Atlanta and Sebring rights, to NASCAR/GA...

Streak

Hard to get viewers and ratings if no one can watch it on TV. Just saying . . .

And another thing, the broadcast team is lackluster at best. If you ever have the opportunity to watch the race on TV with the Fox Sports commentators then watch the same race online with the radiolemans guys it really shows how anemic the commentary on Fox is.

Here's the way it goes:

On Fox the commentary centers only on the car on the screen. They never tell you what's happening in the other classes unless that class is on screen. They rarely if ever cover GTD or LMPC (don't really care for that one) and would prefer to talk only about DP. I will say the last few have been very good about covering GTLM because that's where the real racing is. And I can't tell you how many times something has happened just beyond the focus of the camera shot, a spin or something, that they just ignore and never really get back to commenting on.

Now listen to radio lemans. They talk about everything. You can see what's happening on the screen so they tell you about the other classes too. And they know every little thing about each team., driver and car which makes listening that much more interesting. And the enthusiasm level is several notches above the Fox team.

Then there's the commercials. Here's what watching on Fox is like: 2 minutes of racing then a Corvette informercial then a commercial. Return to race with 2 minutes of "While we were in break all the good racing happened . . ." then two minutes of live racing then back to commercial then return to the broadcast and "while we were in break . . . ." and so on. It's painful to watch. It's essentially a series of replays. In a nutshell it sucks.

Couple all that with chasing the broadcast all over the dial and it's a clusterfk. Like the last race they switched the start from FS1 to FS2 so I missed the first 30 minutes of the race. For AMATEUR ladies golf no less. Not even the pros!

Then you come to the understanding that F1 gets 5 times the coverage of our own American racing series and they'll devote over 100 hours of coverage to the 4 hour Daytona 500 while not airing entire IMSA sprint races reliably. Atherton is the weak link. It's his show and he's not good at his job.

The radiolemans guys are simply the best racing commentary in the industry today. Truly brilliant.

Watch them back to back during the next enduro when Fox forces everyone to watch the majority of the race online while they air girls badminton or some other equally silly ****.

Veloce Raptor

What Hunt said.

Hey Bob S: great Johnny O quotation! So true!!!

ProCoach

BoP predates IMSA by a long way.

BoP is used in PWC, all the SRO series, VLN, most national GT series and data collection is an integral part of evaluating that balance. As are fuel capacity, weight, inlet restrictors, rev limits and a ton of other measures.

Sorry guys, it's not that simple. A series technical administrator is the loneliest job in the world...

Mvez

back on topic, it seems Patrick Lindsay, has also been very vocal in the garage about IMSA BOP'ing driver pairings, not the cars. IMSA have taken a lot of heat about the AJR 23 pairing (and the fact that Porsche has some factory drivers in GTD), so it wouldn't surprise me if they are trying to slow the AJR 23, at the expense of the whole GT3R field.

IMSA's GTD (and BOP) driver rating system certainly isn't ideal, unlike Blancpain/PWC, who have simple "Pro" and "Pro-Am", and "AM" categories, and less political BOP for the cars, which also just works better IMO. In SRO, the stars are the CARS....in NASCAR (IMSA), as usual, they try to promote drivers, not the cars. That doesn't work in sportscar racing. The draw IS the cars.......if you have any doubt, just look at DP. NOBODY connects with those **** wagons, and yet the France ego-maniacs just won't let go of them. There is nothing wrong with the 991 GT3R. Put a great driver in it, and it goes fast, plain and simple.

You are going to see more GT3-R's in PWC, because as you can clearly see, the BOP works better on a whole, as it's less political and better developed. Way less expensive to run, and the Porsche is easier to drive on a shorter stints for the AM drivers.

Cory M

For those complaining about too many classes: imsa has announced 2017 is the last year of pc class and dpi (replacing dp and lmp2) will not be split into pro and am classes. So we'll be down to 3 classes in 2018.

dbf73

which series/administrator has done the best job with BOP? or perhaps just the least worst?