Speedway Motorsports CEO Marcus Smith joined High Point University President Nido Qubein in the Power List interview, a partnership for discussions with influential leaders. Interview videos are available at www.businessnc.com.
Marcus Smith, 51, grew up loving NASCAR and racing at his family’s Charlotte Motor Speedway, which his father Bruton Smith cofounded in 1959. It is now a 1,200-acre complex in Cabarrus County. As a teenager, the younger Smith cut grass, picked up trash and sold tickets. He was named president of Speedway Motorsports in 2008 and CEO in 2015. He led the effort to take the publicly traded company private in 2019. It had revenue of about $460 million in its final year as a public company. It now operates 11 tracks.
Marcus, I’ve admired you as a leader who picked up the legacy of your father, who was recognized across the state. I used to think all you did was the Charlotte Speedway and NASCAR racing. The more I dug in, the more I realized you’ve got something going on all over this country. You’re in California, New Hampshire, Texas and other places. Tell me about Speedway Motorsports.
Well, the biggest thing is we have great people. We have a great team. It’s really just amazing to think about our 12 different properties around the country. Sonoma in California, the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, places like New Hampshire Motor Speedway, our home base in Charlotte. We host big NASCAR weekends and drag racing and car shows and music festivals and all sorts of things. It really starts with Christmas. Great people and Christmas light shows. Those are fantastic for the communities we’re in.
What does it mean to have a speedway? What is the asset?
So we own the land and in a lot of cases we built the speedways and in others cases we’ve bought existing properties and built up or added on and improved. But when you own a speedway, you’re in charge of a lot of plant and equipment, so to speak. That property is there to operate not just NASCAR races, but all sorts of events. One weekend, for example, we had an IndyCar race at the Nashville Superspeedway. We had a motocross and monster truck show in Dallas, Texas. We had a 3,500-person event out at the Sonoma Raceway. And we had a big party at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. There’s always another event, another NASCAR weekend that we’re getting ready for.
How many employees do you have?
We have about 700 full-time employees, and then every event will flex up to whatever is needed. For a NASCAR weekend, that is about 2,500 employees.
Do people rent the facility? What is the relationship between the speedway and the race or the event?
At most of our events, we are the host and the producer of the show. Sometimes we co-produce, like, with a company like Feld Entertainment, where we host motocross and supercross events. They will bring in the motorcycles or Monster Trucks. Then our team handles what we call back of house, including beverage, parking, security and maintaining the site.
What are your revenue sources?
Running the concession stands, parking, selling paraphernalia and T-shirts are major revenue sources. There are also TV broadcast rights. Like any major sporting event, there’s a sharing formula between the athletes and the owners and so forth.
The biggest race in Charlotte is the Coca-Cola 600. Who are the major people who
take part?
Rick Hendrick with Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing. Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin with 2311. Roger Penske with Penske Motorsports. They are the titans of industry and sports entertainment that have NASCAR teams. We have a long-term agreement with NASCAR where we host the Coca-Cola 600 on Memorial Day weekend. We handle the party, so to speak. NASCAR operates the event, what happens on the track and in the garage and we handle everything else.
There are about 700 trailers that move from track to track in the NASCAR world every time there is a racex. You’ve got the television compound, souvenirs and food and beverage and security and communications.
What’s the toughest part of your job?
I mentioned earlier how we have 700 full-time people, but then 2,500 for a single event at one venue. The toughest part is training that 2,500 that come in to help us put on events, when you’re not doing it every day. It’s a little bit like golf, where you don’t have the Masters every weekend at Augusta, right? But everybody knows Disney and that venue is operating every day and they have tomorrow. I always tell our team we don’t get tomorrow. The big event is on big event day and tomorrow, that’s when we clean up.
So we have got to get it right. So every time we have had a successful event, we really struggle to make sure that it is something you want to come back to. My dad always said, “Sell to sell again.”
What’s the capacity of the Charlotte Speedway?
Charlotte is about 150,000 people, plus all the people who work there. The Highway Patrol does a phenomenal job to help us with the traffic management, along with local law enforcement and a great team of people that help the event go along.
How many events do you hold in the course of a year?
Charlotte Motor Speedway hosts two NASCAR weekends a year, the Coca-Cola 600 and the Bank of America Roval 400. We’ve got two big car shows every year, the Christmas show that starts up around Thanksgiving and goes through New Year’s Day. We usually have a music festival or two. We just finished up with our motocross event. We’ve got a great dirt track that is active a couple of times a year. Every summer we host this great event called the Summer Shootout, which is made up of race cars that we build in Harrisburg, called Legends Cars.
About 75% of the current NASCAR drivers started with a Legends car at Charlotte
Motor Speedway.
Which of the 11 race tracks is the biggest one?
The Sonoma Raceway is actually our largest, with over 1,800 acres. Las Vegas Motor Speedway, has close to 1,500 acres. Our biggest event overall is an event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway called the Electric Daisy Carnival. It’s a huge music festival, one of the biggest in the world with 165,000 people a night for three nights in a row. We have more than 10,000 campsites at this event. It’s really tremendous.
Marcus, what’s unique is you never wanted to do this stuff. You wanted to be
a doctor?
That’s right. Or a journalist. I really wanted to be a pediatrician. My mother dropped this seed. When I was young, she always said, ‘You know, you’d be a great doctor.’ I also was pretty active with kids through camp counseling and that sort of thing. I enjoyed spending time with younger children.
So when I was in high school, people started asking me, what do you want to major in college? So I would say, I’m going to go to Chapel Hill, and I’m going to study medicine and, and be a pediatrician one day. But calculus in my freshman year didn’t go so well. That does it for a lot of people and it did it for me. So I thought, OK, I’m going to try this racing thing out.
I had picked up a lot of trash, mowed a lot of grass and sold tickets, but I never had what I call an inside job in the business end of racing. After my first summer working on the inside at Charlotte Motor Speedway, I got hooked. I loved it and I haven’t looked back since.
What is the greatest lesson that your dad taught you about business?
He always said, inspect what you expect and do the right thing. He was very determined and hardworking, but always wanted to have fun as well. I started tagging along with my dad when I was a teenager. At the automobile stores or a speedway, he would always say to our teammates, I hope you’re having fun. And, he said, I don’t really like that word work. It’s got a negative connotation. I hope you have fun.
What made Bruton Smith think of the speedway idea in the first place? What was his
first step?
My dad grew up in the era of the Great Depression, and he was born in Oakboro, North Carolina, on a farm, the youngest of eight. He knew very early that he didn’t want to work on a farm all of his life. He wanted to get off the farm. His first job was at a sawmill, but the first time he had an opportunity to promote a race, he was 17 years old. He and his friends liked auto racing, and, and they needed somebody to promote a race. He went to the local parks and recreation person about leasing a track and he struck a deal with a handshake. He said he made a little bit of money and decided to do it.
The first car he sold, he was also 17 years old. He had a car. He sold it for more than he paid for it, and before you know it, he’s in the car business.
What is it called?
Sonic Automotive, which has about 200 franchise automotive dealerships coast to coast. My brother David is the CEO. We have a brand called Echo Park that sells pre-owned cars around the country.
Much of NASCAR is really based around Charlotte, while the France family that started NASCAR is based in Florida, where they have the Daytona International Speedway. Are they a competitor of yours?
We host NASCAR events and they host NASCAR events. They own NASCAR. It’s a very unusual sport. And, it’s not a league as much as it is a tour of competitors and teams. We work together. If it’s a good event somewhere that is not ours, that’s still good for us and good for the sport.
Marcus, what do you see in the future of your business?
You’ve got a lot of technology in NASCAR now. Every
race team is using predictive technology to understand
strategy on the track in an event. Lots of aerodynamic and performance technology is developed and tested in the NASCAR world. At our events specifically, we provide a really nice opportunity to test mobility options. We work with advanced mobility companies on driverless vehicles, battery electric vehicles and all sorts of OEM testing opportunities. It’s an important part of our future. I imagine a day when maybe you hop in a car that can drop you off, and then it gets other people. Sort of an advanced Uber idea where you don’t have to drive, but it’s more automated. ■