Sponsorship for motorsports on Dover Raceway is trending downwards while the club is still tackling debt and bouncing back from COVID-19 pandemic.

The recent staging of the motorsports event in St Ann on Easter Monday saw smaller crowds and sponsorship and the Jamaica Race Drivers Club (JRDC) President Junior Barnes is appealing for corporate entities to keep the sport alive.

When the Jamaica Observer visited the Dover Raceway on Monday, it was noticed the sponsorship wall that that was once covered with business entities logos and signs had been painted over in white.

“I painted them out two weeks ago because some of them have been there up to 20 years because it looks good. I don’t know why the other directors left them there. I cleared it to let people know those spaces are available,” JRDC President Barnes explained to the Business Observer.

There were seven paid sponsors this year, but according to Barnes, it takes at least 10 sponsors for the event to keep going. When the Business Observer asked what was a possible reason for the decline in sponsorship, Barnes said it was due to a lack of marketing, especially coming out of the pandemic.

After spending over $2 million on promotion over this year, he revealed that the response from people was that they were surprised the event was still being held, leaving him to realise techniques used in the past cannot continue.

“They had a budget of under US$2,000,” Barnes said, while noting that only accounted for a limited form of promotion.

“They don’t think that putting up fliers, boards, going on the radio, make sense. We have to run the operation as a business and not as a club,” asserted Barnes.

The move forward is to improve its marketing thrust which is just as important as running a successful Dover Raceway. Along with fewer sponsorships this year, the club is also in debt that has been accumilating over the decades.

“When you have a club and every two years you change leadership you have different visions. Somebody from the last administration when to get GCT [General Consumption Tax] and made a commitment to pay GCT. We’re an NGO [non-governmental organisation]. We don’t pay GCT,” Barnes said in frustration.

And though the debt was not given much attention in the past, Barnes said he is determined to wipe the slate clean.

“If we continue this way, the club will always be in debt. So we have to move to a business model. We have two choices — dissolve JRDC or continue going with it,” he said. “When I look at the numbers from last year, if this year we have similar numbers, we can make a significant move to paying off the debt,” Barnes added, while declining to disclose the level of debt the club was in. He, however, said the aim is to bring the debt down by next April and then move towards using the extra earnings for the club into different areas.

No particular budget was set for this year’s staging and the profit has not yet been realised as the calculations are yet to be finalised.

Sponsorship for a 10 by 10 space costs around $350,000 for the whole year. However, Barnes explained that with less sponsorship between last year and this year, their financial position did not budge.

During the lockdown in 2021, the JRDC faced significant financial challenges and was rescued by a donation of $2,000,000 from Richard Lee, CEO of Miracle Corporation Ltd. This year, one of its corporate sponsors, Amsoil, spent the same amount, but according to Barnes, all of that went towards the lease for the track. Other sponsors ranged from $250,000 to $1 million.

“We need for the first meet to prepare the ground to get it for racing. To get water in the tank is $6.6 million to pull off the first meet. The grass hasn’t been cut in six months so it’s over five feet high. We have an event there every month, and now for this year, we’re doing two car shows in order to raise funding,” said Barnes.

Despite the challenges, Barnes does not believe motorsport is dying, even with younger, talented race car drivers leaving the island and a decline in the hype that once surrounded Dover.

“We are now in a era when there’s no Doug Gore, there’s no David Summerbell Jr rivalry. So the new rivalry with the new generation has begun. So it has to be built,” Barnes said optimistically, while suggesting that a revamping of Dover race track driving is what’s needed to drive interest.

“I think that we’re going into a transitional phase and we’re starting over since Covid.” He added further, “We’ll be fine. It’s in the rebuilding process. In motorsports we have some exciting new talents that have emerged and we have to market them, and without money, we can’t market them, and without marketing, there will be no growth.”

Barnes reminded that Dover racetrack driving has been in existence for over 40 years, and is the first circuit track in the Caribbean.

“We want to keep it alive; we’re entering into a new phase and anything new is always hard but we need their [corporate sponsors] support,” he said.