The Kankakee County Speedway and its track promoter Billy Knippenberg responded to complaints about the track’s long program on Tuesday night for the DIRTCar Summer Nationals 2025 Hell Tour.
On Facebook, Knippenberg broke down his costs and revenues for the night in order to assuage some of the complaints he was fielding due to late model program not ending until well after midnight on the east coast.
He wrote, “I want to spell this out for everyone so that everyone can understand why we have support classes. A summer nationals show or Mars type show cost is roughly 50,000 for the night. That covers the purse and all the other expenses. Some tracks might have less expenses than a track like Kankakee if they own the facility out right. I have personally had 4 summer nationals events so far and 1 was rained out. My first 2 events lost a lot of money. I try to continue the races to keep Late Models coming to Kankakee because we don’t race them weekly.
From there he shared the track’s average revenue for a national or regional event such as the Hell Tour, “We only averaged 650 grandstand tickets for our first 2 events that is $16,250.00. Pit pass sales we averaged 500 pit pass sales and that is $22,500.00 [for a] grand total of $38,750.00.
“Now we have concession sales which everyone thinks we make so much money on which we don’t,” he continued. “We would have to add close to 50% to the cost of concessions to really start making some money. The food business is really tough with hourly paid help, Waste, cooking and cleaning supplies and following health inspectors guide lines. So I went back before this post and looked back at numbers and the profit on concessions, souvenir, and beer was $6536.00.”
“So let’s do some simple math 16,250.00 + 22,500.00 + 6536.00 =45,286 then we had a 3000.00 sponsor so loss was -$1800.00 [on the $50,000 cost],” he stated. “Now take out the support classes which we average roughly 5 pit passes per car so that is around 10,000 in pit passes and 1000.00 in concessions minus the purse for those cars nets us roughly 3000.00 in extra money so the loss would be $4800.00 and we really don’t have a way to pin point how many added fans in the grandstands are there from the local support classes so that would be even more loss.
He did note, “Last night we had the largest crowd and car count we have had in the last 4 years but how can we count on that when we sign these races up?”
Next, he discussed the fact that the race was streamed, “Now a huge problem with all of this is STREAMING. I always hear back in the day we only had 3 classes for these events. Back in the day they had over 1000 people in the stands and there was no streaming.”
“Kankakee gets 0 dollars from DirtVision,” he revealed. “We get our sanctioning fees dropped which basically would cost us 2000.00 more to run the show.”
“2 race tracks have seen so much negativity the last 2 days over support classes and I wanted to clear up why we have them,” he stated. “We really have no way of knowing how many people are going to show up for a mid week race or sit at home and watch it nowadays. Again, the race track doesn’t get anything for you watching it at home.”
“Dirtvision is owned by World Racing Group which owns The Summer Nationals. A couple years ago I reached out to the main person for Dirtvision and asked if I could see what the viewership looked like at Kankakee County Speedway from prior events and I got a generic response via email that they would not share that and reassured me that streaming was helping our sport,” he added. “Now if Dirtvision wants to bring me $5000.00 I would gladly only run 2-3 classes and I’m sure most other tracks would as well. I want to thank all the people that did come out and support us last night. I’m sorry for the late night.”
In the comments on the post, Knippenberg also made it clear that he wants World Racing Group to work with him and other tracks to create more manageable nights while reducing his risk of losing money, “I feel like this has to happen so dirt car comes up with a better plan.”
What do you make of Knippenberg’s response to the complaints about the program going long into the night?
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