This is the Stattmann Baby!!  Time to Scatt a little bit.

Let’s talk about a headline we haven’t seen yet.  Next month NASCAR will bring its third cup race to Fontana in ten months.  Will they sell enough tickets?

We’re not talking about Daytona, Darlington or Dover.  This is all the way in Southern California.  Enemy territory.  Among the unwashed of NASCAR’s newbie fans way out here in La La Land.

It’s been said there are as many as seventeen million people in Fontana’s market area.  That’s almost more than Virginia and the Carolinas combined.  And NASCAR officials who own Fontana want one hundred thousand of those seventeen million to buy a seat to see yet another Cup race.  That’s only about a half of one percent.  Not much in the way of market penetration, is it?

To be fair, both of the 2004 Cup events sold out and it’s expected that this one will too.  But any marketer will tell you that a half point isn’t a big wall to climb.

Still, climbing it is important.  Just ask the people at Darlington or North Wilkesboro or Martinsville how big a half point can be.

Peace.