2012 PSA Meeting Summary - Our success in 2012, Plans for 2013, New Membership Levels

2012 PSA Meeting Summary:

The Pro Sportsman Association held two meetings at the recently completed International Motorsport Industry Show (IMIS) in Indy this past weekend. Due to scheduling conflicts with conference rooms, our meeting was pushed to Thursday. We had a number of racers indicate to us that they could not make the Thursday meeting, so we held another small meeting with some racers after the show on Friday. NHRA Division 3 Director Jay Hullinger and Tech Director Ritch Bowers attended the Thursday meeting.

The main topics covered were what the PSA has accomplished in 2012, how we did it and what we plan to accomplish in 2013. We reviewed our 2012 budget and gave projections for 2013. We also unveiled new membership packages for racers and manufacturers/businesses.

For those of you who were not able to make it, here’s a written version.

First and foremost, we, the PSA would like to thank everyone who supported our efforts in 2012. We could not have achieved what we did for the alcohol classes without your support and efforts. Considering we started the Pro Sportsman Association from a concept to what we have accomplished in just one year, we are very pleased. We feel our efforts are making a difference and with a year under our belt, we feel we can make even more progress in 2013 and beyond.

The Pro Sportsman Association was formed as a collective group of alcohol race teams, businesses and fans to promote our style of racing and build our fan following. Our primary means of achieving these goals is through media promotions. In February we contracted respected journalist and racer Todd Veney to handle our media relations. By writing features on a Top Alcohol racer before each Regional event and coordinating with NHRA to include quotes from the class winners in the NHRA post-race release, the PSA was able to INCREASE our media coverage from 2011 by over 150%. We are thrilled to look back and see the results and the amount of publication our media releases received in the racing media. We had stories published in a number of outlets, including CompetitionPlus.com, InsideTopAlcohol.com, Drag Illustrated (Print & Web), Dragzine.com, DragCoverage.com, NHRA.com (among others). We feel this is a vital part of increasing the fan following of the Top Alcohol Classes. With Todd back on board for 2013, we look forward to continuing our media exposure and building on it.

We are also pleased with the reception that NHRA and the regional tracks have given us. Since we were formed early this year, we did not have the luxury of a full offseason to connect with the track operators and make our services available to them help promote their regional events. We are taking advantage of the fact the PSA has been granted permission to speak at a nearly all of the NHRA Track Operator meetings in each division. Our goal is to build a relationship with these track operators that will ultimately lead to more robust promotions of the events we race at. This will greatly help us achieve our goal of increasing our fan base.

If our first track operator meeting we spoke at was any indication, this is going to be a huge success for the PSA. PSA Board Member Ray Drew, a former track owner, spoke to the Division 3 tracks at length had very positive feedback from the tracks on what we have done and how we can work together next year. There were some exciting concepts discussed utilizing traditional and non-traditional forms of promotion.

We are pleased to see that Royal Purple Raceway in Houston picked the Top Alcohol classes back up, and hope that is a sign of things to come. We are not trying to take credit for this, but we can’t help but think our efforts played a part in getting that race back on the schedule.

Another concept the Pro Sportsman Association developed in 2012 was our Regional “Hero” cards. We struggled collecting image rights for the Central and Western Region members, but with PSA Photographer David Smith primarily attending races on the East to the Midwest, we were able to put together hero cards that featured our members in the East and North Central Regions. These cards were professionally designed and printed by Diana Harker. On one side they featured the TAD members of a region with the TAFC members on the flip side, along with a schedule of events for that region. We were able to purchase 1000 per region at a very low price and distributed these among the members in the perspective regions. The quality of these cards rivals anything you will see in the Top Fuel pits. Every one of our members that received these cards were blown away by the quality.

The purpose of these handout cards were to not only build a more professional and unified image of our members, but to facilitate autograph sessions at our regional events. We hope to build on this concept by getting each region’s cards done prior to the season and coordinating with the tracks to schedule these autograph sessions. The tracks that did these were a huge hit with the fans and racers alike.

We feel this is a great value to the racer as well. Having your car featured on the Regional handout card is a benefit of being a Full Member. Your share of the 1000 cards printed for the region is included in your membership dues. If you would like to purchase more, our bulk rates are very low, and since it is the same card, conceivably racers could pool a large order together to get the price point down to a very, very low rate. We feel this gives a very tangible benefit to being a member of the PSA. You can’t have hero cards of this quality and quantity designed and printed for the price of a membership.

We will work diligently this offseason to make sure we have image rights for all of our membership next year so that we have Regional hero cards for each Region.

We also must commend the efforts of PSA photographers David Smith and Steve Fuhrman. These gentlemen volunteered their time and expenses to give the PSA great photo coverage at the events they attended. Catching the action on and off the track gives fans and racers alike a unique opportunity to get ‘behind the scenes’ at an event.

Supporting the PSA is an investment in your racing future and your racing assets. The key to our viability as a racing class is having a fan following. As much as we would like to think we are in the racing business, we are really in the entertainment business. If the track does not make money, there is no race. If we are viewed as an expense rather than an asset, we will continue to see our racing options diminish. In a perfect world, the NHRA and the tracks would handle our promotions and we wouldn’t have to worry about it. Relying on NHRA and the tracks to promote our kind of racing is why we are where we’re at. Nobody is going to promote Top Alcohol racing as much as Top Alcohol racers will. Whatever your racing aspirations are, increasing the fan following of the Top Alcohol categories helps greatly. We hope through our efforts we will change the perception of the Top Alcohol categories to a class on the rise rather than decline. We hope this will attract new blood to our classes.

The PSA is pleased to announce several new levels of membership for 2013. First off, we are offering our 2012 members a “Founding Member” discount. We are also extending an early payment discount for all membership levels if funds are received by January 31, 2013. Given the tough economy, we understand that every dollar is hard to come by. We realize some may want to support our efforts but simply did not have the financial means. That is why we have created the Associate Member level.

2013 Racer Membership Levels:
- FULL MEMBER: $695 – Feature written by PSA on your team. Picture on PSA Regional Hero cards. Voting rights. Access to PSA Photos. PSA member decal.
- ASSOCIATE MEMBER: $295 – Voting rights. Access to PSA Photos. PSA member decal.
- FOUNDING MEMBER: $500 – For 2012 PSA members. Full membership rights. Discount good if dues paid by Jan 31, 2013.
- EARLY PAYMENT DISCOUNT: $595 for Full Membership and $245 for Associate Membership if paid by Jan 31, 2013.

2013 Fan/Crew Membership Levels:
- GOLD: $200
- SILVER: $100
- BRONZE: $50

The benefits of being a full member in 2013 should more than offset the contribution we ask. If you were to pay for the handout cards or hire a professional writer to do a feature on your team, you will easily spend much more than what we are asking.

Likewise, on the business and manufacturing side, we realized the need for multiple levels of membership. Many of the businesses that service the Top Alcohol racing classes are already helping the classes by giving discounts directly to racers. Our efforts to grow Top Alcohol racing through increasing its fan base is investing in the long-term growth of this segment of your business. We also hope to generate short term ROI by offering a feature story written about your business by Todd. We are also working to create a marketplace between PSA racer members and PSA business members.

2013 Business Membership Levels:
- GOLD SUPPORTER: $695 – Feature written by PSA for your business. Prominent size ad on the PSA website. Access to PSA members via email and mail. Rights to use PSA name in marketing materials.
- SILVER SUPPORTER: $295 – Prominent size ad on PSA website. Access to PSA members via email and mail. Rights to PSA name in marketing materials.
- BRONZE SUPPORTER: $125 – Ad on PSA website. Rights to PSA name in marketing materials.
- FOUNDING MEMBER - $500 – For 2012 members who pay membership dues by Jan 31, 2012.
- EARLY PAYMENT DISCOUNT - $600 for GOLD, $250 for SILVER and $100 for BRONZE supporters who pay membership dues by Jan 31, 2012.

The PSA would also like to add that we are pleased to extend quarterly payment options for any “FULL” membership.

Our expenses to serve you will start building in a hurry, so we hope many of you will take advantage of the early payment discounts so we can build an operating budget by the end of January.

The PSA will ask for nominations for our 2013 Board of Directors and hold an online election on our website. Results will be tabulated on January 31. Please note that all PSA board members receive no compensation or free membership. We pay our dues like everyone else. We also need more volunteers to help us in the areas of social media and updating our website.

In closing, I think the PSA made significant progress in a number of areas. We greatly increased our media exposure and have started a working relationship with NHRA and the tracks. We feel we have created membership packages that offer racers, businesses and fans tangible benefits to go along with the collective efforts to increase our exposure. Help the PSA to promote our ‘brand’ of racing! We look forward to seeing new membership in 2013 and reaching new goals!

Respectfully,
Will Hanna will.hanna@insidetopalcohol.com
Marty Thacker mlthacker@marathonpetroleum.com
Mark Billington mark.billington@pepsico.com
Justin Jacobsen jjacobsen@ace-mfg.com
Ray Drew rdrew@wi.rr.com

 

membership checks

Checks can be made out to the Pro Sportsman Association can be sent to:
PSA New Membership
8619 Lynx Ave
Milwaukee, WI 53225

 

memberships

Just a friendly reminder the racing season is rapidly approaching. We have some membership dues in, but we need more!