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http://www.driftlive.com/dl/2007/03/...-the-internet/
The rapidly approaching 2007 professional drifting season promises to change the face of drifting here in the United States. Several sanctioning bodies involved with drifting have begun to make announcements for the 2007 season. Formula D is pairing up ESPN to air their series, NOPI will has a full drift schedule with their first event rapidly approaching, and D1, despite canceling the Irwindale opener, will have a full US series. DriftCar America with promises of Fox Network Television appears to have fallen apart. All the posturing and jockeying for position that has occurred over the last 6 months strikes fear into my heart.
But Why? Doesn’t this growth simply mean more opportunity for drifters here in the US?
There is a dearth of well-funded US drivers and teams. The number of teams currently running Formula D is a good indicator that the total number of American Teams able to financially compete at the professional level is quite small. Look at the last 3 years of Formula D as a case study. Rhys Millen and Samuel Hubinette have won nearly every event. No other competitor has even come close to giving these guys a real run for their money. This is not due to a lack of talent, numerous other drivers could give these two some serious competition, but the money is simply not in place.
Drivers need money, but where does money come from?
Most drifters start out paying their own way. They put in extra hours at work, or run up credit cards, but in the long term a driver must earn sponsorship. A driver depends on money and support from sponsors in exchange for promoting their brand or product. Sponsors allow the driver to focus on driving, and less on how he is going to pay for his program. He can now afford to buy track time to tune his car and refine his setup. He can have a hauler stocked with backup parts, and can freshen his car between events. All of these elements dramatically increase how competitive a driver will be over the course of a season.
In order to be considered as a viable place to spend ad dollars, a potential Sponsor needs to know that a driver will be seen, his achievements recognized, and that their product is well represented. A driver has control over how he carries himself, and how well he performs on track, but he has far less control over how much exposure a given drifting event will get. The model set up by D1GP has them with 100% control over event coverage. The focus of D1 is producing Option Videos, not providing a true venue for competition, and not promoting the sponsors of individual drivers. In addition D1 as well as Formula D, prevent the media from providing full third party event coverage.
If the only people that see a driver are the attendees at an event, the amount of money that a sponsor is willing to commit shrinks. If television coverage is so brief that only a few seconds are given to each competitor, in a poor time slot, the amount of money that a sponsor is willing to commit shrinks. Notice a pattern?
Formula D, D1, NOPI, and any other drifting series that desires to be successful in the long term, needs to take care of their drivers.
One needs to look no further then all of the amateur drivers who received licenses during the 2006 season to see that this is a weak point. Only a small fraction of those drivers will be able to compete at the professional level during the 2007 season. For many of them, lack of sponsorship is the biggest hurdle.
But beyond Television, DVDs, and live events, what other coverage is out there?
That’s easy; The Internet is the place where huge numbers of drifting fans get their fix when they can’t attend live events. Do a quick search for drifting on youtube.com or google video or myspace.com. Drifting is everywhere online. The only problem is that in order to provide high quality coverage, one must fight it away from the professional drift series.
Ever wonder why all the tandem footage on DriftLive is from practice? It is because both Formula D and D1 do not allow professionals to film their events. That leaves fans watching choppy footage shot by fans from the grandstand. I would love to be able to show you footage of Darren McNamara and Ken Nomura battling at the December D1 event, or Daijiro Yoshihara and Rhys Millen battling it out at the Irwindale Formula D finals, but alas I cannot.
DriftLive.com is not the only website prevented from providing full coverage of tandem battles, all websites are prohibited from filming and sharing tandem runs. Formula D, D1GP and any other series that continues to snuff out high quality web coverage, is drastically limiting their market, and hurting their drivers. Between June and December of last year DriftLive.com served up over 1 million pages to drifting fans. I would hazard to guess that there are at least 10 other sites that are hitting those sort of traffic numbers.
What’s next
The drifting series here in the states are doing what is best for them; Slicing up the sponsorship pie into pieces so small that no one, save a few big teams can get the backing that they need to be competitive. This is a short-term approach that will prevent any of the current series from being successful in the long term if they do not make adjustments. Professional Drifting needs to focus on taking care of their existing drivers, and growing new ones. This can only be done by getting more drifting to the fans, and enticing sponsors to spend more money to get in front of a growing audience.
http://www.driftlive.com/dl/2007/03/...-the-internet/
Thoughts? As a fan and spectator I often find it frustrating that I have to wait months to see proffesional footage of the events on top of never being able to see all 3 qualifying runs from all 32 drivers unless I'm there in person. I hope this year drivers and teams do a better job of releasing the drifting footage that won't air on the ESPN broadcast.
The rapidly approaching 2007 professional drifting season promises to change the face of drifting here in the United States. Several sanctioning bodies involved with drifting have begun to make announcements for the 2007 season. Formula D is pairing up ESPN to air their series, NOPI will has a full drift schedule with their first event rapidly approaching, and D1, despite canceling the Irwindale opener, will have a full US series. DriftCar America with promises of Fox Network Television appears to have fallen apart. All the posturing and jockeying for position that has occurred over the last 6 months strikes fear into my heart.
But Why? Doesn’t this growth simply mean more opportunity for drifters here in the US?
There is a dearth of well-funded US drivers and teams. The number of teams currently running Formula D is a good indicator that the total number of American Teams able to financially compete at the professional level is quite small. Look at the last 3 years of Formula D as a case study. Rhys Millen and Samuel Hubinette have won nearly every event. No other competitor has even come close to giving these guys a real run for their money. This is not due to a lack of talent, numerous other drivers could give these two some serious competition, but the money is simply not in place.
Drivers need money, but where does money come from?
Most drifters start out paying their own way. They put in extra hours at work, or run up credit cards, but in the long term a driver must earn sponsorship. A driver depends on money and support from sponsors in exchange for promoting their brand or product. Sponsors allow the driver to focus on driving, and less on how he is going to pay for his program. He can now afford to buy track time to tune his car and refine his setup. He can have a hauler stocked with backup parts, and can freshen his car between events. All of these elements dramatically increase how competitive a driver will be over the course of a season.
In order to be considered as a viable place to spend ad dollars, a potential Sponsor needs to know that a driver will be seen, his achievements recognized, and that their product is well represented. A driver has control over how he carries himself, and how well he performs on track, but he has far less control over how much exposure a given drifting event will get. The model set up by D1GP has them with 100% control over event coverage. The focus of D1 is producing Option Videos, not providing a true venue for competition, and not promoting the sponsors of individual drivers. In addition D1 as well as Formula D, prevent the media from providing full third party event coverage.
If the only people that see a driver are the attendees at an event, the amount of money that a sponsor is willing to commit shrinks. If television coverage is so brief that only a few seconds are given to each competitor, in a poor time slot, the amount of money that a sponsor is willing to commit shrinks. Notice a pattern?
Formula D, D1, NOPI, and any other drifting series that desires to be successful in the long term, needs to take care of their drivers.
One needs to look no further then all of the amateur drivers who received licenses during the 2006 season to see that this is a weak point. Only a small fraction of those drivers will be able to compete at the professional level during the 2007 season. For many of them, lack of sponsorship is the biggest hurdle.
But beyond Television, DVDs, and live events, what other coverage is out there?
That’s easy; The Internet is the place where huge numbers of drifting fans get their fix when they can’t attend live events. Do a quick search for drifting on youtube.com or google video or myspace.com. Drifting is everywhere online. The only problem is that in order to provide high quality coverage, one must fight it away from the professional drift series.
Ever wonder why all the tandem footage on DriftLive is from practice? It is because both Formula D and D1 do not allow professionals to film their events. That leaves fans watching choppy footage shot by fans from the grandstand. I would love to be able to show you footage of Darren McNamara and Ken Nomura battling at the December D1 event, or Daijiro Yoshihara and Rhys Millen battling it out at the Irwindale Formula D finals, but alas I cannot.
DriftLive.com is not the only website prevented from providing full coverage of tandem battles, all websites are prohibited from filming and sharing tandem runs. Formula D, D1GP and any other series that continues to snuff out high quality web coverage, is drastically limiting their market, and hurting their drivers. Between June and December of last year DriftLive.com served up over 1 million pages to drifting fans. I would hazard to guess that there are at least 10 other sites that are hitting those sort of traffic numbers.
What’s next
The drifting series here in the states are doing what is best for them; Slicing up the sponsorship pie into pieces so small that no one, save a few big teams can get the backing that they need to be competitive. This is a short-term approach that will prevent any of the current series from being successful in the long term if they do not make adjustments. Professional Drifting needs to focus on taking care of their existing drivers, and growing new ones. This can only be done by getting more drifting to the fans, and enticing sponsors to spend more money to get in front of a growing audience.
http://www.driftlive.com/dl/2007/03/...-the-internet/
Thoughts? As a fan and spectator I often find it frustrating that I have to wait months to see proffesional footage of the events on top of never being able to see all 3 qualifying runs from all 32 drivers unless I'm there in person. I hope this year drivers and teams do a better job of releasing the drifting footage that won't air on the ESPN broadcast.
Good write up.
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