Corporate seat sales slumping at NH Motor Speedway

Cheap tickets available for June 28 NASCAR race

For Dick Vaillancourt, the best part of a NASCAR race is the very beginning: the National Anthem is sung, military jets do a fly-over, and all the drivers start their engines simultaneously. "There's nothing as exciting as a fly-over after the National Anthem — it gives me goosebumps," he said.

Vaillancourt, a 64 year-old realtor and Laconia resident, has been a fan of racing since he was in high school. A native of Berlin and then a Connecticut resident, he didn't attend races until he moved to the Lakes Region in the late 90s. Since then, though, he and his wife have made the trip down to the New Hampshire Motor Speedway twice a year to see the two Sprint Cup races held at the track in Loudon.

That is, the Vaillancourts had been attending two races a year, spending a total of about $220 per race, including tickets, food and other costs. But last year, they decided to forgo the first race of the season, and the only race they attended was the one held in September. This year they're doing the same thing.

"The reason we dropped the tickets in July is because it's too damn hot — that and the economy," he said.

The decisions the Vaillancourts made is being repeated by NASCAR fans across the country. USA Today reported that the worst case was at the Michigan International Speedway, which used to sell all of its 132,000 tickets but this year is expecting attendances in the 80,000 range.

In response, speedways are offering deals on tickets in order to tempt people like Vaillancourt to come down for another race. New Hampshire Motor Speedway is doing just that, offering tickets for just $39 for its June 28 LENOX Industrial Tools 301 race, and weekend package deals that usually go for $150 are offered for $99 for both Sprint Cup races that the facility hosts.

The $39 tickets buy fans a seat in the new "LENOX Speed Zone" section, which Fred Neergaard, director of communications for the speedway, said was created when blocks of seats that corporate customers usually buy became available.

"We had a block of corporate seats open up," he said, explaining that these seats are usually not sold on an individual basis. "With the economic situations, the corporate clients have to evaluate the different programs," and many of them decided to buy fewer seats that they usually do.

The good news for the speedway is that the individual tickets sales have remained as robust as ever. Ever since the facility began hosting NASCAR events, in 1993, it has sold every one of the 105,00 tickets for that event. He expects that they'll continue to sell out, even in the current economy, but they haven't sold out yet. Neergaard wouldn't say how many seats were created for the LENOX Speed Zone, but he said there are still some available.

"We understand there are certain people that are in financially challenging situations, and they still want to come to the race," he said. "Our individual ticket holders are loyal — they have continued to buy. Where the difference lies is in the corporate clients."

Overall, business at the speedway has been strong, he said. it won't be a banner year, but the interest in motor sports — both from the spectators and the corporate sponsors — has been steady.

The speedway is busy every day of the week from April to August, he said, and everything from bicycles to motorcycles to vintage cars to NASCAR's Car of Tomorrow will fly around the mile oval.

Neergaard said it sometimes comes as a surprise to laypeople that there's such a strong tradition of racing enthusiasm in New England. New Hampshire, he said, once had the greatest number of race tracks per capita in the nation, and many Canadians can get to Loudon in a half-day's drive. "We have a significant number of Canadian fans and drivers coming down here," Neergaard said.

On the slowest day of the season, 100 people will visit the speedway. A half-million will pass through its gates every year.