DIRTRACKR Daily Podcast - Episode Transcript
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David Gravel tops Donny Schatz at Huset's, answering streaming questions | DIRTRACKR Daily 6/22/21
It is Tuesday, June 22nd, two thousand and twenty one. Welcome into DIRTRACKR Daily. I'm Justin Fiedler.
Today we are talking the World of Outlaws at Huset's, Super DIRTcar Series at Albany Saratoga, I answer some listener questions about streaming services, and more. Let's jump in.
It's never a bad thing to have the World of Outlaws racing on a Monday, and last night's show at Huset's kicks off a busy week between the South Dakota track and Jackson Motorplex in Minnesota. With a bunch of money on the line the next several days, we had a very healthy car count last night, and I don't expect that will change much this week. Besides the Outlaws, there was the regular midwest contingent including Brian Brown, Justin Henderson, Carson and Austin McCarl, Lynton Jeffrey, and others. There are also some guys that towed from the west coast including DJ Netto and Shane Golobic. And California guys Tim Kaeding and Dominic Scelzi were in attendance driving for midwest car owners. We also saw the first appearance of Ian Madsen since he parted ways with McGhee Motorsports and the All Stars. He was driving the DeWall 16 that Brooke Tatnell has raced some this season. And fresh off his NASCAR win Sunday at Nashville, Kyle Larson was on the property as well.
In the night's feature, Donny Schatz led the first nine laps from second, but pole sitter David Gravel slipped by him on the top to lead lap 10, and that was it. The track took rubber with about 15 to go in turn four and from that point there wasn't a whole lot of movement in the field. Schatz made an attempt or two to get by Gravel, but was unsuccessful. Gravel bagged his sixth win of 2021 driving for Huset's Speedway and Jackson Motorplex owner Tod Quiring. Always nice to win at your car owner's race track. Schatz was second, Kerry Madsen third, Brad Sweet fourth, and Kyle Larson completed the top five. It's a shame the track took rubber late, because we'd been treated to some good racing before that. Hopefully they get things squared away for tonight. I continue to be impressed by Kerry Madsen in the Tony Stewart 14. He hasn't finished worse than 6th in his past eight Outlaw starts, and that stretch includes seven top fives and four podiums. I can definitely see him sneaking up this week and winning one of these races. He's obviously got a lot of experience on these tracks. Gravel's win last night closes up the gap a little more to Sweet in the standings with 42 points separating them. Macedo has lost ground in the last three races, with two finishes of 15th. He's now 100 points back in third. An interesting note about the rookie battle. Aaron Reutzel currently sits 324 points ahead of James McFadden, and it will be just about impossible for JMac to run him down. But, if you look at the owner's points, the 9 team of Kasey Kahne Racing and the Roth 83 are actually tied for seventh at the moment. If that had been McFadden in the car instead of Kahne to start the year, we'd have a dogfight on our hands for rookie of the year honors.
Looking at tonight, the intensity should ramp up a bit with $30,000 going to the winner. Last night's win for Gravel has helped in the dirtrackr.com analytics prediction formula, as he's now favored over Sweet and Schatz for tonight. If you can't be at Huset's, watch all the action live again on DIRTVision.
Back on Friday the Super DIRTcar Series announced that three Canadian events on the schedule for 2021 have been affected by the border between the US and Canda being closed due to the pandemic. Events at RPM and Ohsweken, originally scheduled for June 28th and July 25th will not be run this year. There is hope that the June 27th race at Cornwall could be run later in the season, so that event is TBA for now. We will keep you updated as things change.
And speaking of the Super DIRTcar Series, they are racing tonight at Albany-Saratoga Speedway for the $7500 to win Horsepower 100. Stewart Friesen enters as the series points leader over Matt Sheppard and Mat Williamson. Friesen has three wins and five top fives in six starts, which lead all drivers. The last time the series was officially at Albany Saratoga was in September of 2019, when Demetrious Drellos topped Billy Decker and Williamson. There was a big block modified race at the track in 2020, as part of OktoberFast. That race was won by Anthony Perrego over Mike Mahaney and Ronnie Johnson. I think for tonight you are probably looking at the usual suspects for the win. The two Matts, Friesen, and Perrego have been good. Lots of guys are looking for their first 2021 wins too, like Max McLaughlin, Billy Decker, Mahaney and Larry Wight. If you can't be at the track tonight, DIRTVision has you covered with the live stream.
I got an email a few weeks ago from Joe with some questions that I wanted to get to. We've had a bunch of stuff to talk about lately, but I wanted to shoe horn at least some of them in on today's show. The second half of his email has a bunch of streaming service questions so I'll cover those today and get to his other questions about some money and financing stuff at a later date. His first question is asking how the agreements between tracks and the streaming services work. In most instances, the streaming services are paying the tracks or series to cover their events. That could be a revenue share of any money brought in by the stream, or it could be a flat fee. For a service that is selling yearly or monthly subscriptions, they are probably paying a flat fee. which is worked out in advance. Services that actually still do pay per view, are often on a revenue share. Jeremy Elliott for example, that started his sprintcarunlimited.tv this season, is doing a revenue split with tracks. There are times too where a streaming service doesn't pay the track because of how the sanctioning agreements are worked out. Joe's other question is asking how come we still see some tracks that don't stream their events. I do think we are at a point where you can basically see any race from a major track or series on a streaming platform somewhere. At least in dirt racing anyway. Every Outlaw race, Lucas, USAC, All Stars, Summer Nationals, IRA, King of the West, USMTS, and more are available somewhere. And if you pay attention to the streaming schedule at dirtrackr.com, there is a boat load of racing on the smaller streamers every weekend. Sometimes I wonder how some of these tracks and smaller providers make ends meet, because they can't be drawing big crowds to weekly IMCA racing at tracks in the middle of nowhere. Kudos to them for putting the racing online, but it's gotta be tough. For those tracks that still don't allow it, or were long holdouts, the prevailing thought by promoters has always been that it will take away from the gate. When I worked at World Racing Group, we did a few different breakdowns of DIRTVision buyers through the years and the numbers just didn't show that to be true. There is absolutely no way to replicate the at track experience on an app or your TV, so folks that actually can and want to attend will go. For some more context, Kenny Dobson who runs Jacksonville Speedway in Illinois was streaming some of his weekly racing free on YouTube at one point. Jacksonville has since been added to DIRTVision's offerings, but you don't stream your racing for free online if it's going to take away from ticket sales. I believe the expansion of the broadcasts has been a big positive for the industry. It's brought more eyeballs to the racing and has pumped a bunch of money into the system, which is good for everyone. If you have questions you'd like me to answer on the show, please don't hesitate to email or DM them to me. The DMs on both my personal social media accounts and the dirtrackr accounts are open.
A couple of show things before we wrap up today. This is the 346th episode of the daily and I've done an additional 49 episodes of Conversations through this first year and a half or so of dirtrackr. I'm curious what your thoughts are on what I'm doing. I get positive comments on the YouTube videos daily, which is great. But I want to actually solicit your opinions on the shows. I've tried in recent weeks and months to not be so recappy with the daily shows, and instead try and give more context and analysis on what's happening. Let me know if I'm actually succeeding. Also, if there are things I don't cover that you wish I was, don't hesitate to say so. I try and be comprehensive, but if there are big things I'm missing, I'd like to fix that. As for the Conversations episodes, do you think I should continue doing them? I know there are a lot of options for you to hear those types of interviews now, and I don't want to be repetitive. In terms of actual numbers, the top 20 most viewed videos on the dirtrackr YouTube channel are all daily shows. I only have one Conversations episode that's broken over 1000 views. That makes me wonder if I should continue. Also, just for the sake of transparency, the YouTube videos are making some money now. Once you break 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours, YouTube allows you to put ads on your videos, and I'm sure you've noticed that in the last few months. I'm still a couple grand in the hole on the entire dirtrackr project, but I will be using whatever money I generate to cover my expenses and reinvest in the site and shows. That means better equipment, supporting photographers by buying photos to use, and more. In recent months the YouTube channel has started to outpace podcast downloads, so while I'm not going to get rid of the podcast, I'm going to try and focus more on the videos and their production value. We are approaching 140,000 total views on YouTube and that grows every day. I really appreciate everyone that tunes in to the show. It's been really exciting to watch the audience grow and numbers continue to rise. If you'd like to respond to any of this, DMs and the email are open, as are the comments below.
There are three items on the streaming schedule for tonight, with the aforementioned World of Outlaws show at Huset's and Super DIRTcar Series event at Albany-Saratoga both happening on DIRTVision. There is also FloRacing 24/7. To see the full daily streaming schedule with links to watch, visit dirtrackr.com/watchtonight.
That's it for the show today, hope everyone has a good Tuesday. If you have thoughts about the topics on today's show, leave them in the comments below or tweet at me.
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