So like how do you get that across? I’ve kinda put feelers out to see if I could be helpful in regard to league stuff, which would dovetail into my media efforts.
I’m excited for different reasons than the facility director, obs. I see a league that needs zero help growing but needs yet another step or something. The league will whet the appetite for a broader karting experience. The facility clearly doesn’t have an interest in facilitating that. I did see a few league faces at the TKC enduro (polar opposite of Suoercharged), which was great.
I’m trying to point people in the right direction. I’m also trying to use discord as a potential communication hub. This thundering herd of new urban karters could easily make their way into regional racing. It’s a “young” crowd, but a large percentage are men 25-65 with nice cars and nice clothes. Id say the vibe is dominated by an adult feel as oppposed to teen energy.
If I had to peel off a related interest as a general rule the crowd seems to be into street cars, modded, that sort of thing. You see some nice cars in the lot, my 50th is not anything special, there.
I guess what I’m trying to do is differentiate club racing from regional/national racing. If the only “karting” content a person sees is national/regional racing, they may say “wow, that’s expensive, we can’t afford that”. A person can likely race club for a full season on the same amount of money a national weekend costs.
So how do we utilize the amazing content and exposure these national/regional events create, but say “hey, wait! There’s this much more affordable version of this you can try”?
By having Xander sell airtime to supercharged inc (or any big national amusement karting chain) for advertisements? Thats direct to beginners. It seems like it’s mostly ads for teams and stuff which is great if you wanna compete skusa.
Having someone excited and motivated to help like you are should be a slam dunk for a local club track or retail dealer to team up with you I would think. It’s like finding an already established Street Team.
Can see why you’d not find a super open minded partner in the indoor community but they are out there. Boss in Cleveland, 3 Rivers Karting in Pittsburgh, the old Allsports GP in Reston VA…. All have or had owners that absolutely loved seeing their racers advance past indoor and didn’t view us as the pariah that some places do. Those people are like gold if you can find them. Or convince management at your indoor track that you are providing a service that is good for marketing to the families that want more out of the experience than just indoor leagues. If they are already disinterested though that is a tough sell.
Maybe you need to be promoting karting regionally more so than just your own content? Involve the indoor and outdoor facilities, local teams, etc. That’s a project we have on tap here next.
I have limited my efforts to trying to be “visible” and making sure that there’s content for the series(s) I am interested in and try to “promote” the series via content (kp and elsewhere). It’s not terrifically effective.
(Edit: while not super effective, in the case of SC, adding this series resulted in a huge increase in viewers and subs. Like tenfold. I got more subs in 2 months than I got in 5 years.
My thinking was that there’s this huge group of karters that are basically “clueless” that have joined the SC league. They have zero prior experience and zero knowledge of what’s available. Some percentage of these new karters will want more. Thats the opportunity I see.)
Oooh speaking of which, I should tell them about KartChaser.
I’ve been involved in karting many years and the only real advances (other than greatly improved products and tracks) that I’ve seen are that 1) it is no longer assumed kart racing is done in grandpa ‘s backyard, 2) the opportunities offered by the digital/internet world, and 3) the success of Briggs/Ignite which provide a good option for beginners.
Some local tracks are great at promotion, growth and opening eyes to the sport by bringing in regional/national events on occasion, but even those tracks seem to have peaks and valleys.
My experience however is that due to the lack of any singular direction in the sport, we all have grown accustomed to finding our own way as best we can, which leads to industry leaders who are good leaders but not so much at working together… myself included. Think I’m wrong? Put a plan out there and see how long until someone wants to change it. There are good people in the business side of our sport but they are so busy keeping their own business successful and doors open that we can’t expect much help on a higher level. That said we are lucky to have them!!
Also a huge loss to the sport was the Kart Marketing International trade show near Chicago where all industry leaders had booths and got together in Feb. once a year to talk about improving the sport. We also all made many friends there. Maybe some day PRI can help us but it’s not close yet. Anyone out there that can produce a trade show to bring that back?
For what it’s worth, ANY form of karting is affordable compared to other motorsports options… but maybe our sport can never be affordable like some other very popular sports.
Probably worth testing and iterating on over a course of a few months. To do it (at least in the digital world) you’ll need access to a subset of the audience (ie locale), some of the content… or both. The problem is that the work involved to make it happen is probably not worth it for an individual club… But if you get a group to come together, share the resources relay feedback, set standards and develop the effort… then it becomes more feasible.
Not to belabor the point but this includes implementing the parts that make sure interested folks are being actively managed through a process to learn about their needs and match them.
I think @XanderClements has plans to do something like this, there might be a low hanging fruit that could be tackled first. Short video of a national event that then switches to some local flavor and a call to action
+What Dom said…Although I do wonder why the likes of K1 etc. have not at least experimented with advertising in that kind of medium. Maybe the ROI isn’t there for them
I’ve come to the conclusion that a singular direction or effort is not worth pursuing for the reasons you pointed out. This might read as being defeatist… but it’s not… hear me out… We each have different views on what “karting” is as a sport, it’s many things to many people. There’s overlap of course, but cracking the code on a movement that gets most people behind in karting it is elusive.
I think our efforts are better spent helping people navigate the various flavors of karting and connecting them with the flavor that works for them best at their particular point in their karting journey
The reality is that nobody has control over all of the different aspects of karting or the rule stets, tires championships etc etc. If that happened, you can be sure that as soon as it did, something else would popup. It’s an unsolvable problem from the perspective of karting as a whole.
Challenge is… what incentive is there for someone to build a “navigation” system. Which is really just another term for marketing.
I believe there is already a meeting of sorts for karting folks at PRI? Not anything on the level of the karting exhibition though.
In the past I pondered the idea of a virtual conference… challenge as always is finding the right people that are available to do it.
I think that’s a given. Bar a handful of outliers, motorsport will always be more expensive compared to most sports at a given level.
Is the only “pro” class x30/shifter?
I thought a lot of pros were also doing ka100 (but maybe that’s like them going to a club race). If it’s just for fun, who’s paying for tires? Or do those results matter even if not “pro” tour. (So like I guess this means that Norberg wouldn’t run ka100 since not pro?)
I would love to grow the OVKA Swap Meet into becoming this in the future. When I was a kid, the Swap Meet was the ONE place a year you could easily get all the parts you need without driving to Comet or Galaxy, but now with online orders from everywhere, the “garage sale” aspect is less crucial, and there’s definitely an opportunity for a Trade Show & Expo to backfill the void and grow into something more.
Hate to say it, but I’m not convinced that enough people will actually make the trip. It was stopped for that reason I believe, it just wasn’t viable anymore. Subjectively it seems like there’s more winter racing than there might have been back when eKMO expo was running. (
But things can change. Seems like the OVKA thing is growing each year… so maybe it could grow to the point that it becomes an even bigger attraction than it is already.
In mostly sunny SoCal, there was a very highly organized rental sport kart series, which used the same track as the two kart clubs. The sport kart series was cheap to enter, large entries, always sold out and very very competitive. On a race day, every month, almost 90 drivers would show up. The Sport karters were pretty serious and even had their own test session during open test days. I believe it was during these test days that the some sport karters were exposed to racing karts. This worked well for attracting the older karter (24 YO and older) but SoCal has a huge population: There are 4M-5M males 25+ YO less than 1 hour from the track. The General Manager at the track did a good job of ensuring good promotion for both types of karting.
KZ and X30 are designated “pro” classes because they are the top tier classes in the country, not because they are filled with “pro” drivers. Ryan has run 100cc stuff lately too in “non-pro” classes.
Hell, Yamaha used to be called “Yamaha Pro” not that long ago and it was mostly filled with regional and club level guys.
I think I understand. I guess what I’m confused about is if ka100 isn’t designated as a pro class, what incentive is there for the teams like RPG to have someone like Ryan run the ka as well? Would it be the data for customers, etc?
X30 isn’t designed as a pro-class, it just happens that the top level of single-gear karting at SKUSA is X30, hence the ‘pro’ nomenclature. It’s a spec-class at the end of the day so KA and X30 are the same thing in concept. The KA100 is just a tad cheaper to buy (and possibly run). other than that incentive remain the same for RPG.
Pro in a karting context is also a weird nomenclature quirk that’s hard to really put a pin on.
Ah OK so the use of the term PRO is sorta not really what matters. X30/shifter is top and that’s just what we informally call it pro. It’s just kinda that the lower HP makes it less relevant at the tippy-top. Theres only so much we can be focused on.
But am I correct in assuming that a team like rpg may choose to run their best drivers in ka100 because the data and information for the clients under the tent is in demand?
Hold up. If all the best teams have clients who want to run ka100, couldn’t that make ka100 like a club race for the top drivers that “need” to race it to get setup data for the customers?
Could be set up, could be demonstrating they can provide a winning package. They need to sell chassis and engine rebuilds to keep the money coming in. Sometimes you might not have a fast customer and you need a driver to get to the top of the step with your logo on their chest.
KZ is more a ‘professional’ class as it has a FIA World Championship and factory teams. X30 doesn’t, it’s a hobby engine at the end of the day. But Pro is used quite informally. It’s just a way for an organiser to say “this is the best of whatever it is we’re trying to say is the best”.
