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All it takes is a bunch of teams willing to spend a quarter-million dollars per car, a TV network willing to give up serious TV time, and a bunch of sponsors who think this race will draw better than Grand-Am, ALMS, or IndyCar, none of which draw well enough to more than barely justify participation by teams or sponsors.
Of course, this race would have a benefit the other series don't have---only existing fans will have even the slightest clue what's going on or with whom. No one outside of ALMS' existing fanbase will know the teams, the drivers, the cars ... This is a huge advantage when trying to attract the attention of casual viewers.
To me this is alike an MLS All-Star game---the stars are only stars to people who follow MLS (I don't) so no one bothers to watch.
Look at women's soccer: with huge names like Abby Wambach and Hope Solo ... oh wait, those are only "huge names" to hardcore soccer fans, and register on the general national consciousness maybe every four or eight years when the Olympics roll around. WPS just folded, the second or third women's soccer league to go under.
As for bringing in big-name drivers---Rolex does that for the Rolex 24, and for a couple other races each season. Look at the Brickyard GP. Somehow even having Jimmie Johnson, Juan Pablo Montoya, and Scott Dixon in the field, the race had the same ratings as any other G/A race, and about the same 16 people in the stands.
Oddly enough, this same guy wrote a column complaining that no one cared about even the NASCAR events at the Brickyard 400 weekend. I quote: “… racing is at a crisis in the U.S. Interest - real interest by previously hard-core racing enthusiasts - is waning. And the recruiting of new young enthusiasts has proved to be difficult.”
Which is why a one-off event among drivers with no national reputation will do so much better … which is why the NASCAR stars which couldn’t draw NASCAR fans to a NASCAR race would draw viewers to a race among national nobodies.
Selling a GT Shootout would be easy--all the buyers would be the same people who already watch.
This is the guy who had all kinds of inside info about the new Corvette P1 and Cadillac GT programs—the man who assured us that Cadillac had no choice but to move into GT to replace Corvette, who would be building a P1 car for 2014.
Again, I quote: “Cadillac really has no choice at this point. They either take the CTS-V to the cutthroat world of international GT racing, or they end the program altogether. My bet is that GM motorsports honchos are poised to take the CTS-V racing program up a notch. Then what? Cadillac Racing won't compete against Corvette Racing in GT will they? No, that will never happen. Expect Corvette to be represented in GT by privateer teams.
“But the big news? Corvette Racing aims to compete at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2014 with an all-new prototype racer. The fact that the prototype rules for the 24 Hours of Le Mans are changing in 2014 has spurred GM's motorsports managers to make the decision that Corvette Racing will finally go to the next level after fifteen years of factory-supported GT racing.”
Well, it isn’t 2014 yet. We shall have to wait and see.
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