Q One thing that you said was that 'the AMA's getting out of the race promotions business'. That struck a chord with a lot of the enthusiasts, who accused the AMA of never promoting racing. Did you mean in a more general sense, that the AMA's just getting out of the racing business, which sounds more like what the situation is?
Q. Without the manufacturers, your series has very little value, would you agree?
A Oh, yeah. Certainly.
A I think there's a lot of confusion about what that means. I think people have different perceptions of what the AMA is and what the AMA's role in racing is. The AMA is a sanctioning body, which means we provide and enforce the rules, but also we have served as the series promoter. There are promoters that promote events, whether it's a roadracing promoter that promotes a particular event, and then the AMA strings together a series of those events at promoter-owned tracks, and then it becomes the series promoter. And you're absolutely right. The AMA has not done an effective job promoting our series. If you look at Supercross, which arguably is the most visible discipline outside of the motorcycling community, in terms of mainstream press and mainstream media, that's because we've had a commercial partner who has promoted that series. Who's capable of promoting that series.
In the AMA's case, we've got an extremely small racing staff. If you compare our racing staff to racing staffs of other sanctioning bodies, it's just - there's no comparison. We're much, much smaller. There's no way we could possibly do everything we need to do to effectively promote the race series that we have. And that's why we look to commercial partners. We're not - it's not our intention to get out of racing, by any means. Our intention is to find entities that are much more capable than the AMA to handle the commercial aspects of racing.
Q With regards to roadrace and dirt-track, assuredly in roadracing it's going to be difficult to make the Supercross model translate into roadracing. In Supercross, the action is very contained. It's very exciting. You can sit in the stands and basically understand what's happening. Roadracing, there's a definite learning curve. It's going to take the right partner.
A Well, that's one of the reasons that we put out the broad request for proposals that we did, was because we didn't know what was possible. I think we had some ideas, but we've gotten a significant amount of interest, frankly, for all of our disciplines. Once you put something out there, people start scratching their head and thinking, "Gee, how could we do this? How could we make this work?" Although we're not at the stage yet where we've gotten any proposals, we got a significant amount of interest, and a number of entities that have responded to the RFP and requested more information. I'm extremely optimistic that we're going to be able to find people or entities that are going to be able to help us promote all of our disciplines.
Q Are you aware of the downsides of what the FIM has learned in selling off their commercial rights to their properties, to Dorna for MotoGP? Complete loss of control. And, Dorna was able to grow the series so that the value is, what, almost a half a billion dollars, or something like that, and in the end, the FIM didn't really share in that half a billion dollars.
A Well, again, I think you have to look at it from the standpoint of "what do we control now?" Do we control any of those properties? Again, if we're not capable of growing it, that's not in the best interests of motorcycling. What's in the best interests of motorcycling is letting somebody else, who's capable of promoting it, promote it. I think that's good for motorcycling. I think ultimately it'll be good for the AMA.
Q If you look at the entire situation, the AMA clearly owns the sanctioning rights to the series. But if you're looking for the power in the series, it really comes from the manufacturers and the promoters. The manufacturers stick millions of dollars into roadracing, and the promoters are the guys that gamble, trying to make a profit in this deal. I wonder what the reaction has been from the OEMs to your plan, and also the promoters?
A Well, I think - from both, I think they're taking a wait-and-see approach, from the best I can tell. Certainly there's skepticism. Many people say, "Oh, we've heard all this from the AMA before. 'Things are different.'" But things really are different here. I am committed to making meaningful change, and trying to restructure our organization in such a way that comes back to an organization that is member services focused. I'm not - I'm extremely focused on providing benefits for our members, and for growing motorcycling, growing racing, and the path we were following before wasn't going to get us there, in either case.
Q. Without the manufacturers, your series has very little value, would you agree?
A Oh, yeah. Certainly. I think that the manufacturers make a significant investment in the sport. The key for the manufacturers is the exposure. Right now, because we're not doing an effective job as series promoters, we're not getting the manufacturers the kind of exposure that they should be getting, or could be getting, if we had an entity that's more capable of promoting the sport, and therefore promoting those who participate in the sport.
Q We've seen two series fail in the last 15 years that were alternatives to the AMA Superbike series, and both times, you could look at one factor as to why they failed: neither one of them had factory bikes. Neither one of them had Miguel Duhamel. I think it's paramount in importance from the AMA's standpoint to retain their relationship with the manufacturers. My sense of it is that in the last two or three weeks, the manufacturers have really gotten nervous about what is going to happen with the sale of the commercial rights to the roadrace series.
A I think there's always apprehension about the unknown. I guess what I would say is, "let the process work its course." All of those things are going to be taken into consideration as we move forward here. The recognition of the investment that the OEMs make, and their involvement, is critical, is certainly understood.
Q Switching gears a little bit, in regards to your management style, there's been some fairly serious allegations by your own Superbike media manager and the ex-president of the association. Do you have any comment you want to make on that?
A I guess what I would say to that, Dean, is that I'm not surprised that anyone associated with the leadership of the previous administrations would have problems with what we're doing in our restructuring, because the changes that we're making are a repudiation of past practices. We're going in a different direction than the folks that were here in the past. I didn't take this job, Dean, to continue the status quo. I took this job because I believe that the AMA needed radical change. That's what I'm committed to doing, is to fixing the AMA and the problems that are associated with the AMA. The one thing is that there's nothing wrong with the AMA that what's right with the AMA can't fix.
Q To be specific, there are allegations by Larry Lawrence that employee email is being read, and employee phone calls are being tapped. Could you please offer some comment?
A [Laughing] I don't know where Larry gets that from. I just ...it's just ridiculous that some of the allegations that are out there, that's all I'll say about that.
Q Do you think Larry's going to be working at Daytona next year?
A [Laughing] Wouldn't be appropriate for me to comment on personnel matters. [Laughing]
