Last week we posted a version of ‘The Point’ feature on Australian Supercross, featuring Chad Reed, Jay Marmont, Kevin Williams and Yarrive Konsky, airing their thoughts on what Australian Supercross needs to move forward (click here to view). Global Action Sports managing director Mike Porra sent us this response, just weeks after GAS decided to close the doors on Super X.

As I said in our press release, it was very sad to be forced into withdrawing our support for the sport of supercross in Australia and New Zealand. It was interesting reading the comments of Chad and some of the industry people. Everyone quite rightly has an opinion and that’s the way it should be, as people are passionate about their sport.

One thing I wanted to address from the outset is the comment that has come up a lot, that the formats were the problem for Super X. The bottom line is that this is simply not the case. We have done extensive research amongst many thousand supercross fans (we have 26,000 fans on our database), and the vast majority (more than 80 percent) preferred the Super X formats.

The reasons given were that it was more exciting, resulted in different winners and reduced the chances of a rider checking out on lap one and leading for 20 laps. Can you imagine if we had run all 20-lap formats with Chad Reed checking out on lap one, lapping every other rider in the field and doing this race after race, year after year?

That would have been totally detrimental to the development of the sport. 20-lap finals were what Chad wanted for all the series, understandably from a rider’s perspective. I remain strongly of the belief that the new formats are great for the sport and, like the highly successful Monster Cup in Las Vegas last year, which ran our formats, I believe you will see more and more of this kind of racing in the future.

I know that Jeremy McGrath, for example, is in complete agreement on this (Jeremy worked with me on the development of our formats), and in fact Jeremy ran a big event in the U.S. with new formats before we even started Super X.

I do agree with Chad Reed that in hindsight, live TV from the outset may have been a mistake. It should be noted that our sponsorship paid for it, so it was not a cost, but perhaps it affected ticket sales. I say ‘perhaps’, because in 2011 we went with delayed TV and the ticket sales still dropped dramatically.

It is therefore not certain that live TV affected tickets sales, however the coverage was good and brought the sport to hundreds of thousands of viewers over the four years.

It is simply not true for Chad to say that his voice was never heard at Super X. Our general manager, Mal Peter, used to call Chad on a weekly basis and met with him at almost every round, every year. The truth is that Chad and I did not agree with each other on formats and as a result Chad basically didn’t want to be involved with Super X, apart from riding in it. Chad wanted all 20-lap finals and never forgave me for not giving in to his wishes.

But Chad is 100 percent correct when he said on this site last week that, “as much as we love it and live it, it’s tough to accept sometimes that motocross and supercross (in Australia) are not as big as you’d hope”.

That is the crux of the matter. We tried everything over the four years to make the sport work, but in the current environment, not enough people are prepared to buy tickets to watch this sport, to allow for decent tracks in reasonable venues.
It is as simple as that, unfortunately.

What Kevin Williams said was totally correct – the sport will have to go back to more cost-effective venues and downscale, unless there is another promoter prepared to put in the kind of investment that we and SEL (promoter of the V8 series, who also failed promoting supercross) have done, or the industry contributes a higher level of sponsorship, which they have never been prepared to do.

I must take issue with Yarrive Konsky’s comments on this site from last week. I am amazed that he would label me as ‘arrogant’ for having a vision of trying to take this sport to another level. Whether through luck or good fortune, I have had the same vision on other sports such as the Uncle Toby’s Ironman, The Crusty Demons, and Nitro Circus Live, and these have all been very successful. To be called arrogant for having a vision and having a go, is a strange view of life. You can’t succeed if you don’t try.

I really did believe that supercross could be developed and grown. We came into Super X very well prepared. We did extensive research, we looked at best practice from around the world, and we put together a strong product. We didn’t try to emulate the U.S. product – our break even in 2011 was only just over 6000 tickets per round.

I don’t think it’s arrogant to believe that we could sell 7000 to 10,000 tickets to a supercross event in Melbourne. We sold 30,000 to the Crusty Demons shows in 2009 and 38,000 to Nitro Circus Live in 2010 and are on track to exceed that this year. We sold only 4000 tickets to the 2011 Melbourne Super X event.

Yarrive says we “got the timing wrong”. What does that even mean? When is the timing going to be right?

At the end of the day, Chad is right, it’s disappointing that there are simply not enough fans prepared to buy tickets each year to this sport, to support decent venues and decent tracks in the capital cities. I am indeed very sad that we failed, but I am very proud that my team gave this everything we had. I hope the fans of supercross believe that we contributed to the sport in some small way.