LaughingCat; I will respectfully disagree that this will hurt the sport. . . in the long run. This has a strong chance to be the catalyst for revolutionary change in the structure and public awareness of the sport. This focuses around a TV deal said:
I am a huge fan of the Geico Race Team and agree with a lot of this statement, but Geico, the Insurance Company is not doing this to get better races or venues or to take over the Key West Worlds. They are doing this strictly for business reasons, to reach potential customers, and to make $$. Geico the company, not Geico the race org. is probably the largest and most sophisticated marketing company to get involved with this sport at their level. It seems like you can't watch an hour of prime time TV without seeing one of their commercials. This amount of advertising costs millions and I imagine $150,000.00 is a drop in the bucket, however what they really lost is a year of reaching TV viewers which they will never get back, and this is hard to put a $$ figure on. We know the warm and fuzzy side of Geico; Mark, Scotty, Mikey, the pretty girls in bikinis, and the larger than life hospitality at the races. But behind all that is a large corporation with a powerhouse of attorneys, accountants, sales analysts, and marketing teams that don't play the same way that has been norm in the offshore circuit. In a way I feel sorry for JC and his wife, I think they were way in over their heads and if I was them, I would be doing anything I could to raise funds to get Geico to settle.
Going forward this should be a good thing for racing (optimistically I am thinking glass half full), however keep in mind that by the sheer magnitude of Geico's size that even if all race groups were to join together it could be a case of the tail wagging the dog.