Quote:
Originally Posted by spitfire
Stock car racing teams have conducted large layoffs of personnel as corporate sponsorships disappear.
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I'm not disputing anything else in your post, but NASCAR and the European Grand Prix systems have been in retrenchment mode for a couple of years now and will continue so into this year. Certainly the general economy has had some effect, and the specific depression in the automobile industry even more, but I suspect that NASCAR simply expanded beyond the point its business model could sustain while Grand Prix and Indy Car have passed their peaks of fan interest. They also all got too expensive. Locally, though, stock car (dirt track) racing is as popular as ever, and still growing in northern New York.
I really think football and baseball will be less affected by the recession than other sports. Baseball because it's a cheap ticket relative to other forms of big city entertainment, and football due to its limited supply (number of games, though I understand they're trying to stretch the season again) artificially keeping demand high and stadiums full. And both have those guaranteed media contracts spitfire mentioned as cushions.