Who owns speedway motorsports inc

In December , Smith formed Speedway Motorsports. If outside observers and competitors did not perceive the formation of Speedway as the beginning of Smith's aggressive assault on stock car racing, then his next, unprecedented move, must have made the signal clear.

Wheeler, named president and chief operating officer of Speedway Motorsports upon its formation, explained the decision to take the company public in a March 30, interview with the St Louis Post-Dispatch: 'What we saw was that NASCAR was heading into a strong power curve.

We felt there would be a year period of strong growth and we needed the capital to take advantage of it. Speedway Motorsports' IPO touched off a trend in the industry, as Smith's fellow competitors followed his lead into the public spotlight. One other company began life as a publicly traded concern in Daytona Beach, Florida's International Speedway Corporation, Smith's closest rival. The rivalry between Speedway Motorsports and International Speedway was an intriguing one, a battle that was competitive yet one that necessitated a display of diplomacy by each company.

The same family that founded and controlled International Speedway also founded and controlled NASCAR, the organization that bestowed the all-important Winston Cup events to racetrack operators and upon whose beneficence Smith's fortunes rested. However, the relationship between the two companies had an undeniable effect on the personality of International Speedway, creating a company whose strategy stood in sharp contrast to the strategy pursued by Speedway Motorsports.

Speedway Motorsports was a risk-taking company, assuming an aggressive and ambitious posture that it inherited from Smith. International Speedway, on the other hand, inherited the legacy of NASCAR, making the company far more cautious and conservative in its expansion strategy. Accordingly, Speedway Motorsports was apt to build a ,seat facility in a large market, banking on drawing a capacity crowd, while International Speedway erected smaller facilities in smaller markets, preferring to nurture stock car racing's development before erecting a massive stadium.

The differences between Speedway Motorsports and its closest rival were readily discernible after Smith took the company public in Some observers were shocked by Smith's audacity in building a massive complex in uncharted territory for stock car racing, but the popularity of the sport and the increasing revenue it was generating bore out the construction of the Fort Worth, Texas, stadium.

By the late s, stock car racing was the fastest-growing sport, as well as the largest spectator sport, in the country. The Winston Cup Series races drew more than 6. During this meteoric upward swing, Speedway Motorsports had increased its total seating capacity from , in to , by , fueling a more than threefold increase in ticket revenues.

Smith, whose racetracks hosted nine of the 35 Winston Cup Series events in , had positioned Speedway Motorsports to take advantage of the sport's enormous growth, astutely remaining one step ahead of the popularity that surprised some of stock car racing's onlookers. Speedway Motorsports stood atop its industry as the largest racetrack owner in the United States, eclipsing the stature of International Speedway and the industry's third-ranking contender, Penske Motorsports. The last of those races this year is the Bank of America Roval , scheduled for Sept.

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Those shareholders wanted to see a return on the investment they were making in those public companies. This makes the once seemingly immovable NASCAR schedule that was fought about and even sued over more pliable than ever.

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