The glass ceiling of drifting
A friend of mine in the drifting community forwarded me a flyer for the Formula D event at the 2008 Long Beach Grand Prix. I laughed after I saw that Rob (of MTV Rob & Big fame) is officially Formula D’s grand marshal at this event. This announcement and a few other items on the flyer brought me to realize a few things:
The progress for drifting in the USA appears to have stagnated. There’s little to no progression of the sport in and of itself. Things are being added to surround the event of drifting, but drifting itself is not moving forward. What people were doing 2 years ago is the same thing they’re doing today: mostly single-file, stop-and-go drifting practice events, competitions modeled after D1, same style of cars, same drivers, etc.
For Formula D, that’s the reason why they do things like have Rob (of Rob & Big) grand marshall their events; it’s because their audience has reached its glass ceiling; meaning they’ve reached their market’s limit in terms of attracting an audience based solely on drifting. At this point, I don’t think anything will grow their events other than adding additional features which have the potential to bring in non-drifting related audiences. Why not have Paris Hilton grand marshal the next event while you’re at it?
While side-show trickery may increase their audience slightly today, it will not expand their audience long term and may even reduce their enthusiastic core audience of drifting fans. What’s most disturbing about Formula D’s trend in the USA is that drifting has more exposure than ever and a large portion of the population has heard of it, however their core market does not seem to be expanding. That’s what happens when there’s too much growth at the top of the sport without the development of the start-up.
To all the small time event promoters out there, running events which truly expand the sport (at a sustainable pace) and increase the skills of the drivers, I salute you.
