Moses had Mt. Sinai. Kenny Nowling, President of the ADRL Series, has the retaining wall at Memphis Motorsports Park.

After a weekend of racing attended by 112 spectators, Nowling, somewhat depressed, rested on the wall as personal assistant Jessica Alcoke walked up. Looking up at the Memphis sky, Nowling pondered the future of the fledgling sanctioning body.

Alcoke approached Nowling and commented, “We might as well give the tickets away. At least we can make some money on t-shirt sales.”

Nowling looked at the near two dozen spectators in the grandstands, half of which were Elvis impersonators in town for a convention, and once he got past the initial anger over what he initially considered a ludicrous and untimely statement, he realized Alcoke's words made sense. Certainly things couldn't get any worse.

Memphis Inspired the ADRL’s Free Ticket Giveaway …

Moses had Mt. Sinai. Kenny Nowling, President of the ADRL Series, has the retaining wall at Memphis Motorsports Park.

After a weekend of racing attended by 112 spectators, Nowling, somewhat depressed, rested on the wall as personal assistant Jessica Alcoke walked up. Looking up at the Memphis sky, Nowling pondered the future of the fledgling sanctioning body.

Alcoke approached Nowling and commented, “We might as well give the tickets away. At least we can make some money on t-shirt sales.”

Nowling looked at the near two dozen spectators in the grandstands, half of which were Elvis impersonators in town for a convention, and once he got past the initial anger over what he initially considered a ludicrous and untimely statement, he realized Alcoke's words made sense. Certainly things couldn't get any worse.

“We barely broke 100 spectators,” Nowling recalled. “We might not have gotten that many if there hadn’t been a bachelor party with Elvis impersonators from New York. Thirteen Elvises saved my ass.”

Six million tickets later, Nowling cherishes his time at the wall.

When the ADRL opens the gates at Memphis for the first time since the inaugural ADRL Memphis Drags, Nowling will return to the wall, like a military veteran visiting a memorial.

“I’m going to walk over to that wall and collect my thoughts in front of the largest crowd that Memphis Motorsports Park has ever had,” Nowling said. “It will be nice to be on the other end of that book. We will have the dubious honor of attracting both the largest and smallest crowds at this track.”

Amazingly, Alcoke nearly lost her job because of her suggestion because initially Nowling believed it was the stupidest words he had ever heard.

“When she made that half-cocked statement, adding in that we’d sold thirty shirts out of 112 spectators, the only thing I could do was talk myself out of firing her,” Nowling admitted, adding, “The more I thought about it, the more I realized that was a 30% sales ratio and how many shirts could we have sold if there were 10,000 spectators.

“I felt it was the craziest and stupidest idea I’d ever heard. We’re in the live entertainment business. How can you give away the tickets for free? That’s the thought that ran through my head.”

The Memphis race in the record books, Nowling took the time during his drive back to St. Louis to think about and run different scenarios through his head.

“I was desperate and at that point, what did I have to lose?” Nowling explained. “It started out as a move of desperation but soon ended up becoming one of the best calculated decisions in the history of the company.”

Nowling scoffs at rumors suggesting he gives away millions of tickets  prior to each race; in actuality that number is closer to 200,000 – 400,000. Even if just half of those people come to the race track, Nowling is filling the grandstands at or better than the NHRA does at the same tracks.

Nowling understands that those attending his events are coming largely because of the free ticket. He believes if that’s what it takes, then that is what it takes. Nowling does collect for parking, charging at least $10 dollars per car, regardless of the number of people in the car.

“We’ve gone back to Rockingham and other races, and our research tells us that 72-percent of these fans have never attended a drag race. But, they keep coming back. I think our race fans are more inclined to come out and walk down the Midway because they haven’t seen the same trailers at every race for the last 30 years.”

Fresh faces can translate into fresh sales and new opportunities for sponsors.

“We have brought out more first time fans than any other drag racing series out here,” Nowling proclaims. “Once they see it, they come back and when that happens we are able to provide sponsors with new fans they have never reached before.

“We don’t do radio or television advertising,” Nowling added. “The free tickets are our advertising … the mouth to mouth … business to business … we don’t do anything to advertise selling the tickets. I don’t foresee doing that either. If the model isn’t broke you don’t need to fix it.”

Right now, the ADRL model remains unblemished.
 

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