Latest / Midwest Racing Central Today / Get To Know Flo with Michael Rigsby

Transcript

Get To Know Flo with Michael Rigsby · Midwest Racing Central Today

0:11
SPEAKER_00: Hi everybody.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to this week's edition of Midwest Racing Central.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: Today I'm Pete Bistoni.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: I can't believe the calendar is in the second half of September already.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: We've had a lot of racing to talk about.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot more racing to come yet.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of you watch a lot of that racing through Flow Sports and Flow Racing.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: Let's bring in Michael Rigsby from Flow Racing joining us here back on Midwest Racing Central today.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: Mike, how are you?
0:32
SPEAKER_01: Pete, I think I've first doing great.
0:34
SPEAKER_01: And I think I've started every interview I've done the last month with.
0:38
SPEAKER_01: How is it September already?
0:39
SPEAKER_01: How is the season already over?
0:41
SPEAKER_01: How did we get here this fast?
0:42
SPEAKER_01: I feel your pain completely is we're the dirt track season's wrapping up.
0:47
SPEAKER_01: The cup season less than two months to go.
0:49
SPEAKER_01: I don't know how the hell we ended up here, but here we are in mid-September already.
0:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm with you.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: So let's start with what's we've what we've seen.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: And again, and again, flow racing.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's a lot of Saturday nights where I'm not traveling, and I've got my you know TV streaming, everything that you guys give me.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: I think the other night you had like 22 races coming my way, Michael.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: So it's a bit amazing.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: But I know last week the World 100, and that was a big one.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: Give us sort of the inside view of that.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: You bringing us to bring it to us on flow racing and what went down there in Eldora.
1:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Eldora, just a just a monster venue, right?
1:19
SPEAKER_01: Tony Stewart's place in Western Ohio, which is so big and so important.
1:22
SPEAKER_01: Uh, it was really cool to see a guy who had never won a world 100 or really never won a crown jewel at all at Dirt Late Model Racing and Nick Hoffman get that win last weekend.
1:30
SPEAKER_01: And I've kind of been an Illinois kid, and Nick was an Illinois kid, kind of followed his entire career from modified racer to moving to Charlotte and hoping to maybe have a NASCAR career to that not working out to building modifieds.
1:43
SPEAKER_01: Only three years ago, finally getting a shot at dirt late model racing.
1:47
SPEAKER_01: And not only did he get a shot at dirt late model racing, he hooks up with Ty Torg.
1:50
SPEAKER_01: Three years later, he's a World 100 winner and one of the five biggest dirt late model names on the planet right now.
1:56
SPEAKER_01: Oh, by the way, he wins the World 100 Saturday.
1:58
SPEAKER_01: On Thursday, Pete, he signs a deal with Spire Motorsports to become their first ever full-time dirt late model team.
2:04
SPEAKER_01: Is NASCAR and Jeff Dickerson and that group continues to sort of, you know, give a look to all these dirt track guys in their developmental program, which is really cool.
2:12
SPEAKER_01: So Nick signs one of the more lucrative deals in late model history on Thursday with Spire, wins a World 100 on Saturday in front of the largest crowd in the history of Eldora Speedway.
2:23
SPEAKER_01: They stopped selling tickets at four o'clock on Saturday.
2:26
SPEAKER_01: This venue holds over 30,000 people, and they stopped selling tickets at four o'clock on Saturday.
2:33
SPEAKER_01: It was just an awesome celebration of short track racing and really cool for a buddy of mine, Nick Hoffman, to get his first ever World 100 win, which was awesome.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: It was so fun to watch.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: You guys did a great job bringing it to me.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: I watched it on Saturday night.
2:43
SPEAKER_00: I want to go back to the Spire Motorsports piece of what you talked about.
2:46
SPEAKER_00: I obviously spent a lot of my time on SiriusXM NASCAR radio talking about Spire Motorsports for a lot of different reasons.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: But how important is it to the dirt world to have a team like that, an organization like that, spend some resources and some time developing dirt late model racers, Michael?
3:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I think that's the biggest thing is those of us that I have no problem saying this, those of us that have spent our lives around dirt track racing, we always have a little bit of a chip on our shoulder, right?
3:08
SPEAKER_01: We're always like, hey, these guys are as good as the guys who race on Sunday.
3:12
SPEAKER_01: They just are.
3:12
SPEAKER_01: They just never either had the opportunity or the lucrative backing or whatever it takes to really get into Cup.
3:18
SPEAKER_01: So for those of us that have spent our lives around this, be it late model racing or sprint car racing, it's a big deal when someone like Jeff Dickerson sits at a podium on Thursday of the World 100 and says, this is the big leagues.
3:30
SPEAKER_01: These guys are professionals.
3:32
SPEAKER_01: These guys are as good as anybody in the country.
3:34
SPEAKER_01: So what Jeff has done in obviously with Geo Celsi and the high limit side and the Chile sponsorship and everything.
3:40
SPEAKER_01: And now what he's doing in the dirt late model side with Nick Hoffman, those things are so important for us as dirt track and short track people to be recognized by people like Jeff and say, this is the major leagues.
3:52
SPEAKER_01: This is this is the big leagues.
3:54
SPEAKER_01: And it's it's really cool.
3:55
SPEAKER_01: It's an awesome deal for Nick, it's an awesome opportunity.
3:57
SPEAKER_01: And Jeff also is a former dirt track racer himself, right?
4:00
SPEAKER_01: He used to race uh midgets back in the day on dirt.
4:02
SPEAKER_01: So this guy's not unfamiliar with what we're doing.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: So it's even cooler to see kind of one of our own make it big and come back.
4:09
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to ask you about a couple of other series that we see on flow racing.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: Uh, saw the Mars series at uh LaSalle Speedway here.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: I know Tony Izzo and that group have been really going through the weather situation we've had here in the Midwest, but a couple of the 25-lap races that that night and the Lucas Oil dirt series.
4:25
SPEAKER_00: Now, let's start there.
4:26
SPEAKER_00: I know unfortunately Mother Nature's intervening this weekend yet again, right?
4:29
SPEAKER_00: We're not going to have the race in Knoxville this weekend, Michael.
4:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it's been it's been a tough year for weather.
4:34
SPEAKER_01: So uh obviously I'll start with uh Knoxville getting rained out.
4:37
SPEAKER_01: Knoxville's kind of moved this week after the World 100.
4:39
SPEAKER_01: It's not as big as the Knoxville Sprint Carnationals, but it's a big event.
4:42
SPEAKER_01: They had two inches of rain Wednesday night, today, or two inches of rain Tuesday night.
4:46
SPEAKER_01: Today's Wednesday, they got another inch of rain.
4:48
SPEAKER_01: They're expecting four and a half to five inches more of rain between Thursday and Friday.
4:52
SPEAKER_01: There was just no chance.
4:52
SPEAKER_01: Knoxville had no chance to have that event this weekend.
4:55
SPEAKER_01: So Lucas now is they're in their final push, their final month of the season, which is really exciting.
5:00
SPEAKER_01: They lose kind of a big event off the front of that, which shuffles the deck as they head to Brownstown next weekend.
5:06
SPEAKER_01: That's one more, one less, I should say, championship chance that these Lucas Old drivers have, which is a huge bummer for them.
5:12
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I just in general, Jason Reed, the GM at Knoxville, they're all incredible, do an awesome job there.
5:17
SPEAKER_01: They're bummed out not to have this big late model event.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: So that stinks.
5:21
SPEAKER_01: We will be back in 2027.
5:23
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, Matt Curl's Mars series.
5:25
SPEAKER_01: Uh Matt, Matt's, you know, listen, there's a lot of the great regional series in the country.
5:30
SPEAKER_01: I might be a little biased because Matt is my business partner at Fairbury Speedway.
5:33
SPEAKER_01: Matt does an incredible job with Mars.
5:35
SPEAKER_01: He runs it like a national tour.
5:37
SPEAKER_01: They've, you know, have just Jason Fager and Ryan Unzicker and these great regional Illinois late model racers that run it, but also all the time, the you know, the Bobby Pierces and Brandon Shepherds of the world duck down and run this tour all the time when they have off weekends on Lucas Oil and uh and the World of Outlaws.
5:52
SPEAKER_01: So I can't say enough about the job Mars does.
5:55
SPEAKER_01: Tony had a little bit of a rough patch that night.
5:57
SPEAKER_01: It was the rain, the water came back up through the track at LaSalle.
6:00
SPEAKER_01: It was it was rough, but Tony does an awesome job prepping the track.
6:03
SPEAKER_01: We were supposed to be at LaSalle last night, again on Tuesday, but he got rained out as well.
6:08
SPEAKER_01: So it's been a tough weather go here in the Midwest.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it really has.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I want to pull back a little big picture for flow racing and some of the other things you have coming up here.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: We're talking a lot of dirt, late model stuff, which is great.
6:18
SPEAKER_00: What else?
6:19
SPEAKER_00: I mean, here we are in the middle of September.
6:21
SPEAKER_00: I know you do so many things there.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: What are some of the other signature events coming up here for Flow?
6:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I want to make sure my friends at High Limit always accuse me of being a little bit of a late model guy.
6:29
SPEAKER_01: So I want to make sure that my high limits yeah, I am a late model guy, but I love High Limit too, right?
6:33
SPEAKER_01: Where we're Flow Sports, of course, and owner of High Limit.
6:35
SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's a big, sort of like what's really interesting is the same weekend, Pete, where Lucas Oil has their championship at West Virginia Motor Speedway.
6:43
SPEAKER_01: On that exact same weekend, High Limit has their championship down at Texas Motor Speedway and is really kind of shaping up to be a good championship chase.
6:50
SPEAKER_01: They've got that last month push too, which starts at Wheatland uh this coming weekend, right?
6:55
SPEAKER_01: Lucas Oil Speedway, the Hockett Memorial.
6:57
SPEAKER_01: They've got three races followed by a Wednesday night at Kokomo that will be live on Fox Sports One next Wednesday night, our final Fox Sports One show with High Limit that you can see on September 23rd, the Fort Crown of Eldora after that, Lakeside and then Texas Motor Speedway.
7:11
SPEAKER_01: That High Limit Championship is probably gonna come right down to the wire with Rico and Lico Rico leading the points right now as well.
7:18
SPEAKER_01: That's gonna come right down to the end.
7:20
SPEAKER_01: Rico caught fire out west.
7:21
SPEAKER_01: He won the gold cup, he won Skagget.
7:23
SPEAKER_01: Uh, so he's kind of retaking the points lead.
7:25
SPEAKER_01: And that uh that series has got about a month left, same as the dirt trailer, same as Lucas Oil.
7:29
SPEAKER_01: Those two series will end within about an hour of each hour, one in Texas, one in West Virginia, in about a month.
7:34
SPEAKER_00: So I want to ask you let's go a little inside baseball about what you guys do with Flow Racing if you will.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: You mentioned some of the races on FS1, uh, some of the races on the NASCAR channel, the fast channel that again, the morning drive from SiriusXM, we're on there every morning as well.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: How do those things come about?
7:49
SPEAKER_00: And what does that mean for Flow to kind of expand yourself and get a little bigger audience with some of those partnerships?
7:54
SPEAKER_01: You kind of figure, hey, like we have 1800 races live on the platform, right?
7:58
SPEAKER_01: So when you've got 1800, you can take and set aside, it's no people sometimes people think it's a lot.
8:04
SPEAKER_01: It's about 25 or 30 races of maybe we might push 40 this year of the 1800 Pete that we will take and put on FS1 or the NASCAR Fast Channel or Amazon Prime, which we're doing now, or the Roku channel.
8:18
SPEAKER_01: And the idea behind that is pretty simple.
8:20
SPEAKER_01: If you're gonna be a subscriber to Flow Racing, you're gonna be a subscriber, you're a diehard, you want those 1800 races.
8:25
SPEAKER_01: But when we go on Amazon Prime or FS1, the idea is pretty simple.
8:29
SPEAKER_01: We want to show people sprint car racing or late model racing or short track pavement racing that have never seen it.
8:35
SPEAKER_01: These people aren't subscribers to Flow.
8:37
SPEAKER_01: So we want them to look at this and go, wait a minute, who is this Rico Abrew who is flying into the corner at 140 mile an hour, pitching the car sideways, racing against Tyler Courtney?
8:47
SPEAKER_01: This is awesome.
8:48
SPEAKER_01: On a Tuesday or Wednesday night, I want to know more about this.
8:51
SPEAKER_01: So for us, it's that it's a way to create more short track fans that would eventually either become Flow Racing subscribers or hell, just become interested in the sport.
8:59
SPEAKER_01: The more people that are interested in the sport, the better for us.
9:02
SPEAKER_01: We know if we take some of those events off platform and put them where hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people are watching, that's going to be very, very good for us.
9:10
SPEAKER_01: And so far it's proven to be true.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: That's really good.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: All right.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: So, like when people complain that you know you're a late model guy, you don't talk about spring car racing.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people will say, You're an asphalt guy, because we'd have a lot of asphalt tracks here in the Midwest.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: You're not a dirt guy, but I love dirt racing as well.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: What about on the asphalt side?
9:25
SPEAKER_00: What else do you have coming up on flow coming up down the stretch here in September, October, and even into November, Michael?
9:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, obviously.
9:30
SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, it's it's you mentioned November that, you know, for the short track asphalt world, all eyes are on the snowball derby always, right?
9:36
SPEAKER_01: Snowball derby down at five flags, obviously.
9:38
SPEAKER_01: So we that the snowball derby live on flow again in early December.
9:41
SPEAKER_01: But you know, I'm really proud, and this partnership we've had with NASCAR, this will be year four, or geez, it's time's flying.
9:48
SPEAKER_01: Year four or five now.
9:49
SPEAKER_01: We've got another three years left where we get to highlight those weekly tracks across the country on the NASCAR side.
9:54
SPEAKER_01: And I absolutely love that.
9:54
SPEAKER_01: Bowman Gray, right?
9:56
SPEAKER_01: Jennerstown, Berlin, racetracks like that, uh Langley, these these tracks that are really, really popular across the country.
10:04
SPEAKER_01: And let's be honest, short track pavement racing doesn't really have quite the popularity that short track dirt racing does.
10:09
SPEAKER_01: It just doesn't.
10:10
SPEAKER_01: So that's been kind of cool for me to almost defend short track pavement racing, even though I've been a dirt guy my entire career and watch those numbers grow on our platform.
10:18
SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, obviously the championship chases are heating up and then the regional divisions.
10:22
SPEAKER_01: The the way I always say too the the coolest cars on the planet are asphalt modifies.
10:26
SPEAKER_01: Those cars are just so badass looking, they're so stuck to the ground, they they go so fast.
10:31
SPEAKER_01: But as we start to turn our eyes towards December, the snowball derby just looms large for us, right?
10:35
SPEAKER_01: That is the that is the Indianapolis 500 of short track pavement racing, and we are already prepping for the snowball derby in December right now.
10:43
SPEAKER_00: Can't wait for that to happen.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: So I I'm working on a story and I've talked to a lot of short track promoters, and some are doing very well, but some are struggling.
10:50
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know that.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it doesn't matter dirt or asphalt.
10:53
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot going on with the economy and all.
10:55
SPEAKER_00: Overall, just kind of curious, your thought, when you go out there and talk to promoters, where where are we short track wise in 2026 in your mind?
11:03
SPEAKER_01: So the I don't think I it's not breaking news to say this the big events are big and the smaller stuff is is feel small, right?
11:10
SPEAKER_01: And someone who owns a racetrack, right?
11:11
SPEAKER_01: Fairberry, Matt Curl, and I own Fairberry together, we're feeling that a little bit this year.
11:15
SPEAKER_01: The Praetor Classic, which is our premier event, tickets are sold out in 72 hours, gone.
11:20
SPEAKER_01: Our weekly attendance is starting to just creep down every year just a little bit more than it was the year before.
11:26
SPEAKER_01: A lot of reasons for that, right?
11:28
SPEAKER_01: Um all of which I of which I don't know that I have the answers to all of those.
11:32
SPEAKER_01: But I think you that's probably what are you?
11:34
SPEAKER_01: I actually'm curious.
11:34
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna throw that question back at you.
11:36
SPEAKER_01: Is that what those promoters are telling you?
11:37
SPEAKER_01: Are their big events good and their weekly stuff is struggling?
11:40
SPEAKER_01: That's what they're saying.
11:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and most of them are saying as well, like if someone was gonna come to two or three races, now they're maybe coming to one or two races.
11:47
SPEAKER_00: And so they are more inclined to come to a big event than maybe the weekly show, is kind of the feedback that I'm getting.
11:53
SPEAKER_01: And I just think it's as much as the great Dave Argabright, who I spent some time with at Eldora this past weekend, Dave said, you know, he goes, I think streaming gets blamed for a lot of things, but he said the the the issue with weekly racing in America is more of a cultural thing now than it is anything else.
12:07
SPEAKER_01: There are, if I go to my TV tonight, there are 7,000 options, right?
12:12
SPEAKER_01: Forget streaming motorsports.
12:14
SPEAKER_01: Uh, just you know, we're holding supercomputers in our hand 24-7.
12:18
SPEAKER_01: The amount of things to do in the world right now, there are things that people are going to choose not to do.
12:24
SPEAKER_01: And for whatever reason, that that weekly racing is kind of falling into that category where people want to see the biggest and best.
12:31
SPEAKER_01: Uh, I'm gonna fight like hell to keep weekly racing going on my racetrack.
12:34
SPEAKER_01: I know that.
12:35
SPEAKER_01: I think there's a chance that that one day, 20 years from now, we might be the only ones that are weekly racing in the state of Illinois.
12:40
SPEAKER_01: And I hope that's not the case.
12:42
SPEAKER_01: But we all have to come up with um we can't make everything like the Savannah Bananas, right?
12:46
SPEAKER_01: Not everything can be sub Savannah bananaized.
12:49
SPEAKER_01: But I do think what they have shown is listen, the Savannah Bananas 10 years ago or eight years ago or whatever, nobody was going to those games.
12:56
SPEAKER_01: They are now selling out Yankee Stadium, they are now selling out Texas A, they're selling out Kyle Field at Texas AM.
13:02
SPEAKER_01: They've done something right to attract people to what otherwise was not an attractable thing.
13:09
SPEAKER_01: How do we do that at the short track level?
13:12
SPEAKER_01: Um, I it's not making a mockery of racing.
13:15
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to do that.
13:16
SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying they're doing that in baseball, but there's another angle.
13:19
SPEAKER_01: We have to, and me too, I'm a racetrack owner.
13:22
SPEAKER_01: How do we take weekly racing and figure out a way to make it more appealing on a Friday, Saturday level?
13:28
SPEAKER_01: And we all have to do that.
13:29
SPEAKER_01: We have to do that.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: I I had one promoter say, and I find this interesting, if I make every weekend a special event, then none of the events are special.
13:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
13:38
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
13:39
SPEAKER_00: And so I think and and I kind of get that, but I like I said, I'll go back to what you know what some of the fans have told me.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: Listen, I don't have it, I can't be there.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: A lot of it, and to be honest with you, Michael, yeah, the economy and all that is there, but you know this time is a big commodity right now.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: And I think if you talk to a family of four for the summer, they might not have three or four weekends.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: So they want to make the most of the one or two that they've got.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: You nail on something that we don't talk about enough.
14:02
SPEAKER_01: Like Pete, Pete, how old are you?
14:03
SPEAKER_01: Like, how old are you?
14:04
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to tell me if you know one, but how old are you?
14:06
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
14:06
SPEAKER_01: I mean, no, I'm I'm in my 60s, yeah.
14:08
SPEAKER_01: For sure.
14:08
SPEAKER_01: Okay, you're in your 60s.
14:09
SPEAKER_01: Uh, I'm 44.
14:10
SPEAKER_01: I if you ever I'm 44 and I've never been busier in my entire life than I am right now at 44.
14:14
SPEAKER_01: I bet you, okay, you're in your 60s and you've never been busier.
14:18
SPEAKER_01: People have the ability, and I mentioned these phones.
14:20
SPEAKER_01: We are so we can fill every second of every minute of every day because of how connected we are.
14:25
SPEAKER_01: And when you start to do that with all of the entertainment options in the world, things are gonna fall off, right?
14:31
SPEAKER_01: So, therefore, people are only gonna choose quote, the biggest and best things to go to.
14:36
SPEAKER_01: I need to bring up time more.
14:38
SPEAKER_01: I never bring time up enough when people are talking about why they can't attend more weekly and regional and local racing.
14:44
SPEAKER_01: And that's a big part of it.
14:45
SPEAKER_01: I looked at my wife and I's calendar the other day.
14:47
SPEAKER_01: January 3rd is the next weekend we have available.
14:51
SPEAKER_01: January 3rd.
14:52
SPEAKER_01: When I was a kid, there is no way my dad had his calendar booked through January 3rd.
14:56
SPEAKER_01: And we just do that as a society a little bit more now, too.
14:59
SPEAKER_01: And that's her, that's I think that's affecting weekly racing.
15:01
SPEAKER_01: I think it is.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: I agree.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: All right.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: So the next time we bookend a show, we'll wait till January 3rd because we know you got to look at the weekend then.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: We don't have to do that.
15:07
SPEAKER_01: We don't have to do that.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: Uh let's let's get a little sneak preview.
15:10
SPEAKER_00: I mean, again, I don't want you to spill the soup, but I know you're looking at 27 already.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: What are maybe some of the things we're gonna see?
15:15
SPEAKER_00: Anything different, new tracks, new series?
15:17
SPEAKER_00: What's going on with Flow for next season?
15:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're always tinkering with our productions, right?
15:22
SPEAKER_01: Like um, we've got in Eldora this past week and we had the car pointers, right?
15:25
SPEAKER_01: Like here's Ricky Thurton Jr., here's Jonathan Davenport.
15:27
SPEAKER_01: Uh, our graphics package were really overhauled and are really working in more like immersive graphics where um the the transfer spots in the history of guys are like, how's Jonathan David Davenport done historically at Eldora?
15:40
SPEAKER_01: Here it is, boom, popped on the.
15:42
SPEAKER_01: We are just gonna continue to refine that.
15:44
SPEAKER_01: Where when you watch a high limit LucasOil, World 100, Chili Bowl, Tulsa shootout, that level of graphics and user viewer, I should say, info, you're gonna go, wow, this stuff's really good.
15:54
SPEAKER_01: This is like Fox level, broadcast level stuff.
15:57
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna see more and more and more of that.
15:59
SPEAKER_01: I also think we're gonna continue doing more with data, right?
16:02
SPEAKER_01: People love consuming data, um, just the data timing, timing, race timing, lap times, all that kind of stuff.
16:08
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna see more and more of that.
16:10
SPEAKER_01: And like I said, I teased it a little bit.
16:12
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna keep working with Fox.
16:13
SPEAKER_01: Um, I think you'll see even more races on FS1 from us next year.
16:17
SPEAKER_01: I think you'll see even more on Amazon Prime, even more on Roku.
16:21
SPEAKER_01: And I'm excited about some of the partnerships that we've got next year with big names in motorsports.
16:26
SPEAKER_01: Listen, we already work with Kyle Larson, Dalen Hart Jr., and Tony Stewart.
16:29
SPEAKER_01: There's more of that coming too.
16:31
SPEAKER_01: Uh, more big names that are gonna be working with us.
16:33
SPEAKER_01: And not that that's the end-all be-all, but it does help expose us to a different level of casual fan.
16:39
SPEAKER_01: And the more of that can then happen, the more Spire Motorsports are gonna sign dirt track drivers to deals, and that's good for everybody.
16:46
SPEAKER_01: So keep keep an eye on all those things around December, January.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: You'll start to hear about more of that.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: All right, we'll look for that.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: Probably PRI when we're down there in Indianapolis.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: I would imagine we're gonna get some of that news.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: Let's double back and I'll just finish on this.
16:56
SPEAKER_00: You mentioned Dale Jr.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: and the Cars Tour.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: Giant fan of the Cars Tour.
16:59
SPEAKER_00: I think the racing is spectacular.
17:01
SPEAKER_00: What you guys do.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: How how how have you kind of noticed the growth of that series with both the late model stock cars and the pro-late models, Michael?
17:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Dale always thinks I'm kissing his butt.
17:09
SPEAKER_01: I'm not.
17:09
SPEAKER_01: It is the I think it is the best pavement racing on the planet, pound for pound, right?
17:13
SPEAKER_01: Like the way those guys go out there and race each other every you know, Friday, Saturday, Sunday is is tremendous.
17:18
SPEAKER_01: With Dale, Dale is one thing that I love so much about him, and Dale, I think it's safe to say Dale is the name in American motorsports, right?
17:25
SPEAKER_01: I don't think that's a hot take.
17:26
SPEAKER_01: He is.
17:27
SPEAKER_01: He believed in our concept and our idea at flow that all of these audiences could talk to each other.
17:34
SPEAKER_01: That we could take a dirt sprint car fan or a dirt late model fan or a USAC fan, those guys are badasses too, non-wing 410 drivers, Justin Grant, and those guys.
17:43
SPEAKER_01: We could take somebody who watched that and make them, not make them, but allow them to watch this, and they could also fall in love with it.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: And just a couple of pieces of raw data that that started with 9% crossover audience.
17:56
SPEAKER_01: Then it was 17% crossover audience.
17:58
SPEAKER_01: And I'm I'm proud to say as we close out 2026, we'll be up in the mid-30s and crossover audience for people who are watching these other things who are also dipping over and watching cars.
18:07
SPEAKER_01: That's exciting to go from 7.5% of your audience watching Dale Jr.'s short track southeastern base pavement tour to 30%.
18:17
SPEAKER_01: That's big.
18:18
SPEAKER_01: And that's one of those things I'll tease a little bit is we're working on something with Dale next year, where could a Ricky Thornton get in a cars tour uh race and drive a car?
18:27
SPEAKER_01: Could a Rico Abreu do a car?
18:30
SPEAKER_01: We're working on that kind of stuff where I know that dirt audience is gonna go.
18:34
SPEAKER_01: Ricky's gonna go over there and he's gonna beat these guys.
18:36
SPEAKER_01: And I'm excited to watch that.
18:38
SPEAKER_01: And that's cool.
18:39
SPEAKER_01: That's cool for cars, it's cool for dirt track racing.
18:42
SPEAKER_01: And Dale has been a believer in that vision that we can get all of these audiences talking to each other.
18:47
SPEAKER_01: And I some of those numbers I shared have illustrated how much that crossover audience is growing.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: Very cool.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: I I'm the I'm the jet, I'm the guy about the rising tide lee lifts all ships.
18:57
SPEAKER_00: I'm a big fan of that.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: So that's great to hear.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: Listen, again, appreciate your time.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: You know how busy you are.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna enjoy the rest of this year.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: We'll look forward when we get to the snowball derby.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: And before you know it, it'll be January 3rd, and you can go out to dinner with your wife.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: Can't wait.
19:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't even know that she's on the calendar with me that weekend.
19:11
SPEAKER_01: So that's a good point, Pete.
19:12
SPEAKER_01: I actually need to make sure she's going with me that weekend.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, make sure.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Michael.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: Appreciate it very much.
19:18
SPEAKER_00: That's Michael Rigsby.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: He is from Flow Racing again.
19:20
SPEAKER_00: If you're not subscribing to Flow Racing, you're missing out big time.
19:23
SPEAKER_00: Still lots of stuff coming up this weekend or this weekend and this year as well.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: All right, keep it right here at Midwestracingcentral.com this weekend.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: We got some weather in the area, but hopefully we'll get things covered.
19:33
SPEAKER_00: We got the big Bettenhausen Memorial for the ASA Midwest Tour at Grundy County Speedway and lots more.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: I'm Pete Pistoni, thanks for watching.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: We'll see you next time right here on Midwest Racing Central today.