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NATIONAL HOT ROD ASSOCIATION MEDIA CONFERENCEJuly 1, 2015Peter CliffordDallas GardnerTHE MODERATOR: I would like to welcome the media members we have joining us today on the teleconference call and want to thank you for your interest in NHRA and for taking time to join us this afternoon to hear from NHRA's Chairman of the Board, Dallas Gardner, and our new President, Peter Clifford. Dallas and Peter will each offer some opening remarks and then we'll open lines for you guys to ask your questions. Mr.Gardner, the floor is yours. DALLAS GARDNER: Thank you. I see a few familiar names on the list here, so welcome and thanks for everybody that's calling in. I think you've all received the release that has gone out today, and I'd like to comment on that first. As you all know, Tom Compton has retired. Tom had spent 22 years with the organization, and the last 15 as president, and we really wish Tom well. Tom did a really good job for NHRA. He was very instrumental in a lot of the issues and getting through the tough economic times that we had to go through in this country, and we wish Tom well. As a board, when we then do our due diligence to find a new president, we first have to take a look at what's required of that person, and when you look at NHRA, how multifaceted we are, and I know that most of us, it evolves around these 24 Mello Yello national events, but there's so much more to the organization. We have an affiliation of 128 racetracks out there that run some 3,000 events every year, and it's week in, week out stuff. That's the stuff that Wally Parks founded NHRA for, places to race and safe places to race. We're involved in track ownership. We own a few racetracks, so we do know something about operating racetracks. And when you go through all of these things to try to find somebody that really is familiar with, and this is not going to be an on‑the‑job training session, we looked to Peter Clifford. Peter in his tenure at NHRA has been the CFO, chief financial officer, executive VP and general manager, and what that means is that basically Peter has had his hands on everything that goes on at NHRA for a period of time and at all levels, so he's intimately familiar with all of the positives, negatives, and he definitely‑‑ we felt like he had been groomed for this position, and it's a natural for him, and we're very happy to have Peter and think that Peter is going to be the guy that can take the Association to the next level. He's enthusiastic. He understands the issues. I will at this point let Peter say a few words. PETER CLIFFORD: Thank you, Dallas. First of all, it's a privilege to be named the President of the NHRA, and I don't take that privilege lightly. I'd like to thank Dallas and the rest of the board for having the faith in me to take on the role. NHRA is an exceptional company with a team that's beyond motivated. They're devoted, and NHRA is a rarity because we have an incredibly skilled and hard‑working team, not only in this office in Glendora but also in the field, at the racetracks, divisions, and everywhere we operate in the U.S. That's what makes this a place I look forward to coming to every single day. Over the last couple months, the leadership team at NHRA has worked on a number of initiatives, and we're eager to roll them out over the next couple of months, and I'd like to lay them out for you right now, and with each one of these there's going to be a series of announcements hopefully that come out over the coming weeks and months. First, improved television. We understand from a lot of our constituents that we need to address some of the issues facing television, and we have some exciting announcements to come on that in short order. Second, increase Sportsman participation and support our member tracks. At the heart of our pyramid, and we look at the sport as a pyramid, we have our Mello Yello Series on the top, at the base is all our Sportsman racing, and we know we need to develop more Sportsman racing going forward, and we have a plan to do that. No.3, expanding marketing partnerships or better known as sponsorships. We're going to be adding more resources to this area, and we're going to have some announcements on that, as well. No.4, expand media coverage. We want to make sure we get the coverage that we deserve as the No.2 motorsports property in the country, and we have a plan in place to do that. We're going to be adding some resources, and we're excited about that, as well. No.5, improved competition at national events. No.6, which is certainly impacted by the first five, new fan development, and that one isn't last but not least because obviously new fan development is extremely important to us. Our goal is to get more people exposed to our sport in order to increase participation and to add fans. As most of you know, we have the most powerful sensory experience on the planet, period. It's the original extreme sport. Finally, I know for those of you that know me, it's not my style to lead you on, but we do have many exciting announcements around the corner, so please stay tuned. THE MODERATOR: We'll now open it up for questions from the media. Q. Dallas or Peter, what, if anything, transpired between June 5 when two NHRA officials confirmed Tom's absence to me and now? Why the delay in making a public announcement? PETER CLIFFORD: I don't know anything about what happened on June 5, so we certainly can't comment on that, but we made the announcement, and I'm not going to speak for Dallas, but we made the announcement as soon as it was available, and that's why we're here today is to make the announcement. Q. Peter, with a change in president of a major organization like NHRA, it's an opportunity for the sport to do something different, to make a bold new statement, and I know that you're a low‑key individual like Tom was, so I mean, is it a time when people kind of want the NHRA president to reach out more and to be more visible, and do you plan specifically to do that, and how do you plan to be a little different that way? PETER CLIFFORD: I certainly do plan to be out there a lot going forward, and as far as a series of announcements, we do have a number of announcements that I just referred to with the initiatives that we're working on, so I think what you're going to see is a series of them coming out in rather short order. We all want the same thing. We want to continue to grow the sport and move it forward, and I think we have a good plan in place to do that. Q. Dallas, you've been around for a couple weeks; what is your advice to Peter? You did this for a long time. What did Wally tell you and what are you going to tell Peter? DALLAS GARDNER: I'm probably not going to tell Peter a whole lot because Peter has been here for several years now, and he's very familiar with the issues. But I think that what we have‑‑ we have always had to do is we need to balance the needs of our participants, our track owners, our marketing partners, our fans, and NHRA, and sometimes that's a hard balance to do. I think we have to listen. I think we have to look for new ideas. I think we've always got to push things forward. One of the things I see in Peter is I think he's really a good listener. Q. Dallas, what reason did Tom give the board for deciding to retire at this time? DALLAS GARDNER: Tom really didn't give a reason. Tom decided to retire. Q. Did the board either directly or indirectly suggest or ask Tom to retire at this time? DALLAS GARDNER: No, no. I would tell you that I was president for 15 years, and I think you all know that this is‑‑ motorsports is a tough business. It's a hard business, and drag racing, I think, particularly is difficult. And Tom had been president for 15 years. It was no surprise to me that Tom decided he wanted to step down. Q. And a question for Peter. In your opening remarks, the first thing you referenced, which I'm sure we all are interested in, is announcements regarding television. Can you tell us today if NHRA will continue with ESPN next season? PETER CLIFFORD: What I can tell you is we have some exciting announcements coming up in the next couple weeks. What we have already made‑‑ that's out there is we're taking television production in‑house starting next year, and so we're taking that away from‑‑ it was previously done by ESPN regional television, and we're taking that on board next year, and that's going to be a big change, but we have additional announcements to come in the coming weeks regarding television. Q. Does that mean that fans should anticipate that at least some of the races would be elsewhere than ESPN next year? PETER CLIFFORD: You've got to wait and see the announcement. I think it will be well‑received. I'm going to leave it at that. Q. Peter, my questions would be, number one, is the NHRA Professional Classes still for sale? PETER CLIFFORD: To answer your question, the answer is no. I know there was a rumor out there the last couple weeks about us being sold to Bahrain or something like that, and these rumors circulate. It's not true. We're going forward as a company. We're very excited about the initiatives we have that I mentioned today. We're confident about our future and the company is not for sale. We're going to be focusing on these initiatives. The other for sale thing, we looked before about finding a great strategic partner out there to help us with television, and that fell through, but now we're pursuing it on our own, and we're very, very confident about the future. Q. My second question would be will Tom be on the board of directors in a paid position like most previous presidents? PETER CLIFFORD: The answer to that is Tom is retired. Q. If the media is so important to you, why has the media director's position been vacant since March? PETER CLIFFORD: I think you'll be pleased with the coming announcements. As I said with that, we have an announcement coming, and I'll leave it at that, but I think you will be pleased going forward, so there will be an announcement on that the the next couple weeks. Q. Are we going to see a million‑dollar winner in drag racing within the next two years? PETER CLIFFORD: Not if you're expecting it to come from purse. Q. I don't care whether it comes from a title right sponsor, but we need a million‑dollar winner. Without it we're considered a third‑rate activity. PETER CLIFFORD: We would want nothing more than to increase purses, but you know that's challenging at this point, and what we're working on, part of the plan, is expanding our marketing partnerships, so we're going to be adding resources to that area, which you'll see in some of the announcements, and we're going to be‑‑ obviously continue to work with teams, but the teams generate a majority of their money from sponsorships. That's where they get a majority of their pay is from sponsorships. We'll continue to work with the teams, support the teams, add our marketing and sales support to the teams so they can help sell sponsorships, and we see that as our role. Q. Peter, you raised the point that going back to the old days when you say taking TV production in‑house, it's going to be reminiscent of the old Diamond P days when you guys did all the TV work. I know you said you had some announcements coming up, but how much input are you going to have in the announcers and stuff? PETER CLIFFORD: Oh, no, as far as comparing to the old days, it can't compare. It'll still be essentially the same trucks out there, the same‑‑ there's going to be a lot of the same because we're obviously going to tap a lot of the resources that are already out there because we're not going to recreate because they do a great job for us out there, we just want to make it even better going forward. I wouldn't say we're going to go back to the old days at all because we've learned a lot on the television front, and we don't want to lose any of the things that we've learned. Q. And in terms of purses, I was at the IndyCar race on Saturday, and I was surprised to learn that Graham Rahal reportedly only made $50,000 a win, and that's a big‑time series, although they're having problems. How would you raise the funding for those guys? PETER CLIFFORD: For the purses, there's no plan at this point to increase purses, so we don't have a plan in place. What we're going to be focusing on is helping the teams bring in sponsorship. We're going to be looking for sponsorship. We're going to be adding resources there to our team to do that. That's where we think‑‑ and to be honest with you, with the improved television, that's going to help. A lot of those things will help on the sponsorship front. Q. Did you share this information with current sponsors, track operators, racers, before you shared it with the media? Are we all learning it at the same time? PETER CLIFFORD: We spent all morning talking to different‑‑ all the different constituents and letting them know about it. First contacts were our biggest sponsors and our employees. We wanted them to know first. But we spent the whole day contacting all the different constituents. Q. And I gather it was good feedback, but I did have a question about the purses. Everybody is talking about the purses, as well. Is there some sort of plan to support the lower budgeted teams? Will that be part of some of these upcoming announcements? Is that in the works? PETER CLIFFORD: Definitely. Our plan is to add‑‑ to increase our marketing partnerships, which are sponsorships, and we work very, very well with the teams out there. Gary Darcy and his team, who Gary handles all the sales and marketing for the company, they work with the teams and their sponsor reps to help them sell sponsors. We make our information available to the teams. We make presentations for the teams. So we try and really support them out there because we know without sponsored teams out there, the sport doesn't exist. We have to have well‑sponsored teams out there, so we're very cognizant of that and will continue to work in that endeavor. Q. I meant is there some‑‑ is there a change in the format, the payout format in the works where the lower‑funded teams get some sort of compensation for participating, showing up? I've heard that that may be‑‑ that that has been on the table for discussion. Are you moving that way at all? PETER CLIFFORD: No. No, we're not moving that way. Q. Dallas, did the board seriously consider any other candidates besides Peter? DALLAS GARDNER: What the board did was looked at the requirements and the needs, and we thought about going outside. We decided that we had the best man for the job, that had the experience, and it really made all the sense in the world to put Peter in that position. Q. And just from a timing standpoint, when was Peter formerly offered the job? Was this something that happened, for instance, yesterday, or what was the time frame on Tom's official retirement request and the official offer of the position to Peter? DALLAS GARDNER: It basically all took place today. Q. You mentioned Sportsman's participation. Is the increased media coverage also going to cover more of the Sportsman races? PETER CLIFFORD: There's no plan on changing the coverage on the Sportsman races as far as from an hours standpoint. What we're talking about with the Sportsman, increased Sportsman participation, is to ease up the requirements in order to participate at a Sportsman level. Our division directors, we've been meeting with them on a regular basis, and we have a plan in place in order to ease that up to increase participation going forward, so we're going to make it easier for the Sportsmen to come race with us, and we have some really exciting announcements about that in the next couple weeks. Q. Okay, so you'll be‑‑ is it going to be cheaper or are you going to make rules less particular? How will it be easier? PETER CLIFFORD: That's all within the exciting announcements. It won't be that long before you read about it. Q. Just wanted to confirm you guys are not going to be forth coming with any further information about what actually happened in this change of presidents. DALLAS GARDNER: There's really nothing more to say. I mean, Tom retired. Q. There's a lot more to say. Okay, Tom retired. Just want to make sure. Peter, I have basically two questions about competition: One, Pro Modified is obviously the most populated pro class you guys have currently. Is there any plans to actually elevate Pro Mod to a professional class? And the follow‑up is pretty simple: Is there going to be a replacement for Mr.Clifford in the program? PETER CLIFFORD: As far as the first question, we're very pleased with the Pro Mods racing at the national events, and we've met with the group at the most recent event and plan to continue that just as we have this year, next year. So the plan is to continue that going forward, and we're excited about that. We're going to be looking at our organizational structure and see what we need going forward. That's what we're going to be doing in the coming weeks. Q. Peter, based upon what Jeff said about Pro Mod, what are you going to do about Pro Stock with declining entries and declining interest, whereas Pro Mod obviously is pretty exciting? The other thing is factory stock is lurking in the background. When are you going to elevate that to a higher status than it is now? PETER CLIFFORD: As far as Pro Stock, obviously Pro Stock is a very important professional class for the NHRA, and we're working right now with the manufacturers and others on a plan to improve Pro Stock. That's part of when I said improved competition, that's one of the things we're working on, so we've been working on behind the scenes on that. I'm sorry, your second question? Q. Are you going to do anything to elevate factory stock because those are real‑world cars that the fans can buy. PETER CLIFFORD: Right, and I know our racing operation group is looking at that, and there's no plans as of yet, but I know they're talking about that. I have nothing to announce on that front. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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