OPINION:
Every year, the SXMX internet gets better. This summer Motocross.com and Racer X brought videos and new coverage of the nationals all summer and gave things a major upgrade. Supercross has been doing excellent live webcasts for years and those get better. The news sites are busier and better, and the SXMX media business is supporting more full-timers, all good trends.
The internet is going to be better than ever, and more important than ever in 2008. There is a lot of fast-moving news coming up in 2008 and people are ready to use the internet and respond to it.
The internet is reality on fast forward. If you know where to sit, it can be quite a ride sometimes. What is coming up very soon is a more mature internet meets a lot of really big changes and potentially very good things for the sport, so stay tuned.
When the AMA smartly decided to get out of the way of racing promoters and tell a new story, CEO Rob Dingman used the internet. He wrote up a new vision which turned out to be a good shortcut for us in media wondering what they are up to. They put so much out there, I honestly called back their VP of PR and backed off a request for an interview, because I noticed that what they posted already was better than I would have done in the first place. Cool.
Everyone who is not good at the internet now will be soon, and the attention is going to become more focused there. Sometimes we joke the internet is just a few thousand people arguing with each other, but none of us can stop it seems.
Coming up next is what happens when the AMA follows through on it's plans to step away from racing business. No matter what, change is coming. There is now competition to make things better, and the only real outcome is - if everyone tries that hard to make it better and more secure, it will be. This will unfold on the internet too, like everything these days.
A handful of us that do a lot of the web reporting were at the FIM Off Road Awards in Monaco last weekend, as guests of Youthstream, the promoter of the MX GPs and Supermoto GP. We did the FIM Awards, and brought a couple back which was a surprise. We also got to know the Youthstream president Guiseppe Luongo better, so when news unfolds next year over whatever happens in outdoor motocross, we know who we are talking about. Youthstream is bidding on the contract for the outdoor nationals soon.
The organization of tracks that make up the nationals now, the NPG, is spending it's time now preparing its proposal to the AMA to keep doing what it has been doing. One comment about understanding the news as this unfolds is that just as there have been two AMAs to understand lately - The old meddling one with AMA Pro - and the New Regime that gets out of the promoters way - there are two NPGs.
When there was AMA Pro, the NPG was what they were not, and things got done. They didn't take on the AMA as much as supercross. Things just always seemed to come down to the AMA's Duke Finch got this and that and the tracks did this and that and people worked things out, and the series ran. The good old days. In recent years, the NPG has been working on getting more organized and becoming more than just 12 tracks, and they have had to pace this with changes in AMA Pro in recent years, then with AMA Pro unraveling. Then really quickly, they need to become a new NPG, that walks and talks more like supercross - ready to take on the same responsibilities.
All this and more on the internet in 2008.
Whatever happens, best holiday wishes and looking forward a great year.
