interview

The Richard Petty Driving Experience is just

one of the successful business enterprises of
NASCAR legend Richard Petty

50 November/December 2009
 Decembers Motor Sport Business Forum in Orlando may seem to be
taking place in an unusual location but in fact right on its doorstep is
one of the most unique circuits and sports venues in the world. It is little
surprise given that its stakeholders are the two of motorsports most
famous personalities and the biggest name in entertainment

Sporting drive
By Christian Sylt and Caroline Reid

www.thepaddockmagazine.com 51
 interview
I
t is a glorious September morning in
Orlando and there is a commotion at
the Disney World Speedway, a one
mile tri-oval which usually hosts NA-
SCAR track days. The King is coming and
it shows. Striding into the Speedway en-
trance, bearing his trademark Stetson and
grin revealing teeth which shine brighter
than the Florida sun, is Richard Petty, NA-
SCARs most successful driver.
Petty is here to preside over the inaugural
Kings Cup a track day Experience with
a difference. His Richard Petty Driving
Experience (RPDE) which operates at 22
circuits around the US offers fans the op-
tion of riding with a trainer driver or tak-
ing to the wheel themselves and the Kings
Cup is one step between this and a race.
Around 40 motorsport fans paid between
$600 and $900 to race in a 600bhp NA-
SCAR-style stock car in two timed events
with the driver scoring the highest cumu-
lative score being handed the Kings Cup
by Petty himself. Fans came from as far
afield as Ireland and Australia for the event
and they got their moneys worth.
It used to be that when the season started
the car was purple and it would be purple all year long. Now youve
got 36 races and 36 different colours.
Participants got an engraved souvenir
and timesheet certificate with the win-
ner, a devoted Petty fan called Paul Sea-
man who had raced at the RPDE around
50 times, getting a die-cast car signed by
Petty along with the eponymous Cup it-
self. Petty is as affable as they come and
in addition to his trophy presentation
duties he would stop and pose with fans
and sign incredibly ornate autographs for
them. There is an aura about him and its
not hard to see why.
During his 26-year racing career, Petty
won the NASCAR championship seven
times and scored a record 200 race vic-
tories. He has won the Daytona 500 a
record seven times and in the 1967 sea-
son alone won 27 races. You wont find
many other drivers who can hold a candle
to that. Likewise, his record of more than
125 pole positions and over 700 top-ten
finishes is unlikely to be matched by any
driver in NASCAR or similar top level
motorsport for a long time to come.
52 November/December 2009
Indeed, so iconic is Petty that in May 2010
he will be inducted into NASCARs inaugu-
ral hall of fame alongside two of the sport's
late pioneers: Bill France, who founded
NASCAR and ruled from 1948-71; and Bill
France Jr, who took over from his father as
president from 1972-2003. The two other
inductees are the equally historic names of
seven-time champ Dale Earnhardt and Ju-
nior Johnson, who won 50 races as a driver
and six titles as a car owner.
When you get down to it Im 72 years old,
Im still going to all the races. How many
people are that lucky? says Petty adding
the good lord looked down and put me in
the right place, in the right circumstances
with the right people and Ive not done
anything its all the people around me that
made it work.
Off-track, Petty made motorsport busi-
ness history in 1972, 14 years into his ca-
reer, by securing NASCARs first national
sponsor the oil company STP which paid a
whopping $200,000 to sponsor his car an
incredible sum given than racing partner-
ships were still in their early days. STPs
red and blue colours still adorn the RPDE
cars but NASCARs finances have moved
a long way since Pettys early days.
Top sponsors such as Budweiser are pay-
ing around $20m per year moving down
to around $3m annually paid by insurance
firm Aflac which has its mascot goose em-
blazoned on the car of the Roush team. The
deals tend to be much more flexible than
those in F1 with two sponsors sometimes
sharing space on cars and jointly paying for
it. For example, Office Depot and Old Spice
sponsor the Stewart Haas team with Office
Depot appearing on the car at 60 percent
of races. Like Budweiser they pay a total
of $20m but they dwarf in comparison to
the Cup series title deal with telecoms firm
Sprint, a 10-year deal which began in 2004
and is believed to be worth $750m. How-
ever, this is not the norm any more.
We are getting more sponsors now but
they are $1m sponsors not $10m or $15m
sponsors so now youve got to get five
guys before you can get your operation
going, says Petty. It used to be that
when the season started the car was pur-
ple and it would be purple all year long.
Now youve got 36 races and 36 different
colours. Thats what it takes for teams to
operate. I dont know if I ever see it going
back the other way, he adds.
Returns for sponsors are still on pole po-
sition. Pepsis Amp brand is a Hendrick
Motorsport sponsor and it says that as a
result of the deal five million consumers
have tried the drink who had never tried it
before with its exposure increasing from
50 percent to 70 percent. Significantly, it
adds that $750m of Amp branded mer-
chandise was sold last year at NASCAR
tracks almost as much as F1s entire
revenue from race sanction fees and me-
dia rights. In total, NASCAR fans report-
edly spend $2bn on NASCAR-branded
merchandise annually and are three times
more likely to buy products and services
connected to teams than non-fans. In con-
trast, F1 itself makes around 250 times
less from merchandise annually.
NASCAR Inc is the sports sanctioning
body but Petty says that it will help the
teams secure deals if possible. NASCAR
has never been in a situation where it has
gone out and got a potential sponsor and
brought it to a team but if you call them up
they will try to give you an introduction,
he adds. It also helps in other ways but a
budget cap, as suggested in F1 by its gov-
erning body the FIA, is not one of them.
If we were spending all $10m and NA-
SCAR came back and said we are going to
save you $1m, we would still spend $10m.
They try to keep a deal where we dont
have to wipe the cars out and start all over
again. With most of the rule changes they
gave us two years and said if youre going
to build cars build these new ones.
NASCAR Incs sister company is Interna-
tional Speedway Corporation (ISC) which
is floated on New Yorks NASDAQ and
controls 13 circuits. However, it is far from
the only entity to share in the series spoils.
Ticket money goes to the circuits and 65
percent of money from media rights is tak-
en by the promoter with 10 percent going
to NASCAR and 25 percent being a prize
money fund.
Every cent counts since some tracks have
reportedly seen an attendance decline of
25 percent in 2009 and ISC is predicting
an eight percent dip in revenue in 2009
to $700m. It typically costs $0.5m to get
each team car to each of the 36 Cup races
and the annual budget for a top team is
around $30m. The high costs have forced
some teams to merge and Pettys own
outfit, Richard Petty Motorsports, has
done so twice, first with Gillett Evern-
ham Motorsports and then, in November
this year, just 12 months after the previ-
ous tie-up, the team announced it would
merge again, this time with Yates Racing.
It is a formidable partnership since Yates
has 57 wins under its belt and nearly 50
poles as well as a Sprint Cup Champion-
ship in more than 20 years of racing.
Spanning 220 acres, the Wide World
of Sports has state-of-the-art facilities for hosting around 40 different
types of sports on one site and attracts around 180 events annually.
For the 2010 season, the new team will
field Kasey Kahne, A.J. Allmendinger,
Paul Menard and Elliott Sadler. The merg-
er involves the team moving from using
Chrysler vehicles to instead running with
Ford from next year and it is a reunion of
sorts. In 1969 Petty raced with Ford and
won a total of nine races for the car manu-
facturers team before eventually losing
out on the title to David Pearson's Holman
Moody-prepped Ford Torino.
If you had talked to me three years ago
Id say it will never happen but this is our
second merger, says Petty. He adds that
the older the companies are, the more
stable they are as far as racing is con-
cerned. They were able to bite the bullet
and tighten up on some stuff and they
could sit it [the economic downturn] out.
What happens in the future is anybodys
guess but it will make the teams that do
survive that much stronger and the stron-
ger the teams are the better the show we
are going to put on.
He explains this point further by saying
that in previous years we had things so
easy but now we sit down and say this is
not in the bank so we are going to tighten
up our business and as things open up its
going to be a long time before we ever get
as loose playing as we did maybe two or
three years ago. He expects that his part-
ners at Dodge will weather the storm.
Dodge can survive with one team. The
reason a lot of the companies are in it is not
that they are going to get more advertis-
ing out of it they just dont want somebody
else to get all of it.
But racing is just one element of the Petty
empire. The RPDE is becoming an equal-
ly public face as the team, particularly in
Orlando. Richard Petty Driving Experi-
ence is trying all kinds of different things
to entice some of the people who have
been here to come back and enjoy what
I enjoyed for 50 or 60 years, says Petty
adding being in Disney World you have
people coming from all over the world. It
made us feel good that we were getting our
name out there and it made me feel good
that people still recognise that Cup Racing
is a pretty big thing.
So successful was the first Kings Cup that
a second round will take place in Las Ve-
gas on 3 December this year. It makes a
fantastic addition to the RPDE itself which
at Orlandos Disney World Speedway alone
has been taken up by stars such as Michael
Phelps, John Travolta, Leonardo di Caprio,
Michael J Fox and Samantha Mumba.
The Richard Petty Driving Experience
started in Charlotte and they opened a per-
manent facility in Las Vegas at the end of
1996 so the driving experience was look-
ing to expand, says Dave Williams, op-
erations manager for the RPDE at Disney
World. What better place to expand to
than Walt Disney World where you have
people from all over the world coming ev-
ery day, he adds.
The Speedway is a remarkable product
which hosted the first round of the Indy
Racing League (IRL) in 1996. It is owned
by Disney but its estimated $6m construc-
tion cost was funded by the IRL. Capac-
ity is 50,000 plus hospitality sky suites in
the infield and for several years spectators
watched NASCARs Craftsman Truck
series race there as well as IRL. The last
race it hosted was in 2000 but the RPDE
makes an ideal-year round alternative ten-
ant. Disney was looking for tenants who
would be at the race track a lot more, so
we came in, says Williams. The circuit is
extremely slick and probably the finest in
the US not to host a race.
Ive driven on about 20 of the tracks
around the country in a stock car and it
is one of the top five tracks for me. It is a
technical track, it is a drivers track, adds
Williams. This is reflected in the success
of the RPDE at the circuit. A customer
survey gave the experience high marks,
and one-third of the customers said they'd
come back for another drive in the next
12 months. We do about 10-12,000 ride
alongs at this track each year, says Wil-
liams and at an average cost of around
$400 it gives the RPDE revenues at that
single circuit of around $5m.
The circuits biggest cost is a low double-
digit revenue share deal with Disney and
Williams says that after that labour and
probably racing fuel. We take about 8,000
gallons at a time so thats a big cheque. He
explains that around 20 people work at the
circuit every day and 12 cars are kept there
with around 100 in total run by the RPDE.
Overall, the RPDE had more than 100,000
customers last year who either chose the
ride along experience three laps with
an experienced driver for $109 or one
of the driving programs, the most popular
of which is the rookie experience, with
eight laps behind the wheel for $399.
When the company first started it bought
old cars from NASCAR but as it grew
bigger it found that it was more benefi-
cial to build its own vehicles. First of all
we can build them the way we want
www.thepaddockmagazine.com 53
 interview
them, says Williams explaining that for
example, the windows you have to climb
through are slightly bigger because all dif-
ferent body sizes need to get in and out.
We also have fibreglass bodies so they last
longer and look better longer. If you buy
cars from different race teams they would
all have different parts and pieces so when
we build them every car is exactly the same
which is a lot more cost effective for us.
RPDE even builds its own engines. We
have a full blown shop, adds Williams.
The Wide World of Sports is the only
sports facility in the US to host training events for teams in the three
primary American professional sports leagues.
The best indication of its efforts is that
it is extremely rare that RPDE cars are
crashed. Company-wide last year we put
two million miles on our cars and you can
count the damaged cars on one hand, says
Williams adding that the reason for this
is the way we operate the programme
its a lead follow so anyone who pays to
drive the race car they follow an instruc-
tor and that takes a lot of the guess work
out of it. We also have limits depending
on which programme you purchase and
we have a certain target speed and a very
strict maintenance programme. The cars
are of very high quality and we have a
tyre person every day on track checking
the tyres throughout the day to make sure
they arent getting worn out. There are a
lot of things that put us on top of the list
when it comes to safety and quality. It is
no idle boast.
The Speedway was already on the podium
when it came to the RPDE and with the
new Kings Cup it is moving into top gear.
It is no surprise that the Disney World
Speedway is getting attention from the
RPDE. The millions of tourists visiting the
nearby theme parks annually make for an
ideal audience and it is particularly popu-
lar with dads who can race whilst mum
and the kids hit the parks. It is also soon
likely to get a boost from one of the biggest
names in sport: ESPN.
The Speedway is part of a giant sports fa-
cility, known as the Wide World of Sports,
which sits inside the 39 square miles of
Disney World. It is a model for facilities
54 November/December 2009
of the future and it is as cutting-edge as
they come.
Spanning 220 acres, the Wide World of
Sports has state-of-the-art facilities for
hosting around 40 different types of sports
on one site and attracts around 180 events
annually. Its centrepiece venues are a
7,500-seat retro-style baseball park and
the Milk House - a 5,500-seat indoor field-
house which has four full-size collegiate
basketball courts on its ground level and
another two on an upper level. Comple-
menting these are the 20-acre Hess Fields
which include four baseball diamonds
and four multi-sports fields. In addition
there is a baseball quadraplex, track and
field complex, six-field softball complex,
10-court tennis facility and five further
sports fields. And it doesnt stop there.
Disney Sports & Recreation, which is re-
sponsible for the Wide World of Sports,
also runs the Walt Disney World bass fish-
ing facilities, the worlds top two water
parks Blizzard Beach and Typhoon La-
goon and five championship golf courses
in addition to the Speedway.
Signed sporting memorabilia and pictures
of stars such as Tiger Woods standing
side-by-side with Mickey Mouse adorn
the office walls of the sprawling yellow
complex. Designed by David Schwarz,
architect of the Texas Rangers Ballpark
at Arlington, the Wide World of Sports
architecture resembles that found in
Mediterranean towns with tall towers and
sweeping archways.
But, beyond its sheer size, perhaps the most
surprising aspect of the venue is its focus.
The vast majority of the events staged at
the Wide World of Sports are youth and
amateur oriented. This is the backbone
of its business model and it makes it truly
unique. Crucial to this strategy has been the
Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), the largest
amateur sports organisation in the US.
The AAU announced its support of the
Wide World of Sports several years before
the complex opened in March 1997 and
even relocated its headquarters to Disney
World. It committed to staging more than
30 national events annually at the venue
and hosts 12 national basketball events
alone there each year as well as others in
baseball, gymnastics, inline hockey, track
& field and wrestling.
The AAUs support has acted as a magnet
for collegiate events and three top college
leagues have also held conference cham-
pionships at the Wide World of Sports.
This collection is crowned by the National
Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)
which hosts its Leadership Conference
there every year. But its the venues con-
nection to professional sports which brings
its biggest allure.
The top managers and scouts from the
National Basketball Association (NBA)
come to the AAU national championships
to draft the best college talent before each
season begins. Likewise, the Disney Soc-
cer Showcase is the premium domestic
soccer tournament for recruitable age kids
and as Alex Vergara, Disneys sports mar-
keting and technology director says, We
have 800 coaches that come here. A lot of
these athletes get scholarships on the spot
and we provide the coaches an opportu-
nity to them all in one place.
Getting these extra guests to Disney World
was one of the key reasons for the creation
of the Wide World of Sports. The purpose
was to reach a market that at that point
in time the Disney brand was not reach-
ing, says Vergara adding that it was re-
ally a brand extension to get incremental
guests to come to the resort that normally
wouldnt. He says that a good two-thirds
to three quarters of our athletes when they
are here will be going to the parks, and
this in itself benefits the Wide World of
Sports offering.
Once the games are over, as we like to say;
from the ballparks to the theme parks.
You can celebrate your athletic achieve-
ment, your championship by going to the
 Wide World of Sports aerial - The Wide World of Sports has facilities suitable for a wide range of sports,
including motor racing at the Walt Disney World Speedway.
parks. It is a very integrated approach to
what we are doing, says Vergara and it
goes deeper than that.
By staying at our property and leverag-
ing all that Disney has such as the dining
programme, the transportation and the ho-
tel rooms so that they are close, it becomes
a seamless experience for the athletes,
adds Vergara. By doing that they can fo-
cus more on the competition and having a
good time while they are here and making
sure that that becomes an experience they
will remember forever. Disney even cre-
ates bespoke packages for competitors so
for example, they can get park tickets valid
after 2pm which is useful if they have been
training in the morning. The next step is
making the experience even more authen-
tic. Enter ESPN.
In February 2010 the facility will be re-
named the ESPN Wide World of Sports
and to create a compelling experience, the
company has 40 digital boards and Jumbo-
tron screens around the property that will
show clips of action at the complex, nar-
rated by ESPN on-air personalities. Visitors
also will be able to view game action at the
complex on a dedicated TV channel in any
one of Disney's 27,000 hotel rooms at the
nearby resort.
We want the athletes who come here to feel
like they have made it to the big time, says
Vergara adding there is going to be a lot
of ways that that brand is going to come to
life here with highlight packages and video
monitors. All these boards will be designed
with that ESPN look and you will be able to
see your highlights on those video boards
which give them a form of their own ESPN
experience. Other developments will in-
clude robotic cameras on 50 percent of the
fields which will film highlights packages
that are then given an ESPN look before be-
ing broadcast.
Vergtara says that there is even an ESPN
innovation lab - a group of ESPN folks
housed here trying to discover the next new
broadcast technology. They have this 220
acre stage and the athlete populations and
the event schedules to work with their engi-
neering people and their broadcast techni-
cal people. ESPN is always thinking about
what is next so this innovation lab will be a
petri dish.
The rebranding is a multi-million dollar
project which has been underway for around
a year and a half. The construction started
this summer and we are doing it in stages
but by late January to early February every-
thing will be complete, adds Vergara.
It should bring even more guests through
the gates at the Wide World of Sports and
even though it has only been open for 12
years, some of the young athletes who
have competed there have already gone on
to reach the top of world sport.
These include former Wimbledon tennis
champion Lleyton Hewitt and Chinas
NBA star Yao Ming who played one of
his first US events at the Wide World of
Sports with the AAU. His fellow players
Richard Jefferson, Amare Stoudamire
and Darius Miles all competed in AAU
basketball tournaments there too. Anto-
nio Gates, now an all-pro tight end with
the San Diego Chargers, played for the
Michigan Mustangs at the Wide World
of Sports and American soccer star
Freddie Adu played in the venues an-
nual soccer showcase when he was just
12-years-old. But aspiring to these lofty
heights is only half of the hook to lure
kids to the complex.
The Wide World of Sports is the only
sports facility in the US to host training
events for teams in the three primary
American professional sports leagues. The
Orlando Magic NBA team trains there, as
does the Atlanta Braves Major League
Baseball team.
www.thepaddockmagazine.com 55
 interview
A list of the other professionals regularly
visiting the facility reads like a roll-call of
international sports. Team USA trained at
the Wide World of Sports when it was pre-
paring for the Olympics basketball events.
Tiger Woods has hosted instruction sessions
there. The British Olympic Association
(BOA) has even made the trans-Atlantic
journey for warm-weather training at the
Wide World of Sports.
This professional endorsement allows
young runners to compete on the track
used for training by Marion Jones and
aspiring tennis players to use the same
courts that Pete Sampras and Serena Wil-
liams have played on. And the pros can
often be found strolling through the spar-
kling silver and black 3,000 square feet
weights room. They give great credibility
to the quality of the facilities.
Richard Petty Driving Experience is
trying all kinds of different things to entice some of the people who have
been here to come back and enjoy what I enjoyed for 50 or 60 years.
It also brings guests through the turnstiles
and, since opening, the Wide World of
Sports has welcomed nearly two million
participants with over 180 events in over 50
sports hosted annually.
The Wide World of Sports is thought to
have revenues in the region of a couple of
hundred million dollars and its initial con-
struction costs were around $120m making
it Disneys single biggest sports investment
after its ownership of ESPN itself.
The facilitys revenue streams come from
event registration, gate sales, merchan-
dise, food & beverage and event and fa-
cility sponsorship. Disneys ownership of
ESPN is a big boon for sponsors since, as
Vergara points out, we already have 15
to 20 broadcast events already on our cal-
endar. We are actually the most televised
property at Walt Disney World between
our basketball tournaments, the Old Spice
classic and Braves spring training. Over
time that will continue to grow as we get
smarter about working together.
And Disney doesnt just create program-
ming, facilities and rides. A significant por-
tion of the Wide World of Sports calendar
is comprised of Disney owned and operated
56 November/December 2009
events such as its annual marathon which
attracts around 20,000 competitors.
The event runs through all four theme parks
and is a particularly tough logistical opera-
tion since they are open 365 days a year. To
prevent the marathon disrupting the every-
day park guests, over 200 extra buses are
laid on and the event starts at six oclock in
the morning so it finishes before the parks
open. Holding the event in the slower-period
of January also ensures that fewer guests are
inconvenienced whilst at the same time acts
as an attraction to bring in new visitors in
the form of participants and their families.
However, simply because the facility has the
might of Disney behind it, there are some el-
ements which arent carried over. The Wide
World of Sports credibility depends on it
being a serious sports venue so there are no
Disney characters there and although its
staff are officially known as cast mem-
bers like the rest of Disneys employees,
they are more likely to be described as
team members within the complex. Its
all part of making sure every amateur ath-
lete feels like a pro which even extends to
every competitor at every event having
access to professional trainers.
Nevertheless, the Disney touches to the
complex are unmistakeable. On a macro
level, every event can have customised
merchandise and most have opening and
closing ceremonies co-ordinated by the
complexs entertainment team. But its
the attention to detail which impress-
es most. On close inspection even the
wrought-iron railings form the shapes
of baseball bats and balls and inside the
ballpark clubhouse even the light fixtures
resemble ballplayers.
The Disney brand for us stands for great
guest service, good experience, memories
and quality feel, says Vergara and the
Wide World of Sports is awash with im-
pressive touches to comfortably accom-
modate spectators. Of the 7,500 seats in
the ballpark, 80 percent are between first
and third base and in the Milk House, the
highest row of seats is only 35 feet off the
ground allowing up close viewing of the
action. But the most pampered guests are
the participants.
Soaring stairways and ballroom-style
hallways wind through the Milk House
and surprisingly its even grander outside.
The complex is covered with 105 acres of
Tifway 419 Bermuda sports turf but this
isnt any old grass. With daily downpours
common in Orlandos clammy climate,
the turf has a one percent slope to enhance
drainage systems which can remove five to
seven inches of rainfall per hour. It even
has two data tracking weather stations
to provide up-to-the-minute information
about meteorological activity which could
affect play.
Inside is similarly state-of-the-art. The
Connor sports flooring in the Milk House
is made from two types of imported envi-
ronmentally protected hardwood incorpo-
rating a shock absorption system and the
venue is cooled by two of the largest air
conditioning units in Disney World. There
is much more to come.
This is phase one of a longer term part-
nership with ESPN. The first phase is the
rebranding, says Vergara adding that
one market we are going to go into that
is going to be new for us is the convention
space with an ESPN themed party. So if
youre at a convention here or on a busi-
ness meeting and you want to create some
form of function, party or dinner with an
ESPN theme we will work closely with
our partners to do that.
Kids will of course be the focus though
and future developments also include an
HD screen for spring training so that will
allow us to provide a show you might nor-
mally see at a major league baseball match,
adds Vergara. He sums up the purpose of
the Wide World of Sports neatly: we like
to say that kids walk in loving sports and we
want them to walk out knowing that sports
loves them back. In the hands of ESPN and
Disney, achieving this is childs play.