Kallmann: Milwaukee Mile's biggest season in years might be hurt by disjointed promotion

News item No. 1: The Craftsman Truck Series race at the Milwaukee Mile has a name, eight months after it was confirmed as part of the NASCAR schedule announcement last fall and roughly 3½ months before the race occurs.

News item No. 2: The Milwaukee company that has been the title sponsor for the ARCA race at the Mile for the past two years will be back for a third.

News item No. 3: Ahead of the IndyCar doubleheader at the Mile on Labor Day weekend, one of the bars on the grounds at State Fair Park will hold a viewing party for the Indianapolis 500.

More: An early look at key Wisconsin auto racing events for the 2024 season

All three tidbits were announced in the span of about four hours Tuesday.

Individually, none is particularly earth-shattering. Collectively they’re important and valuable.

Honestly, from a fan perspective, title sponsors mostly affect the appearance of the souvenirs. But money fuels the entire industry and those sponsorships are a part of the business model that allows promoters to put on events, so even if the details don’t matter much, the fact there is a title means something.

For the Indy event, a gathering of likeminded folks on the biggest day on the racing calendar is great. If it helps generate interest in 500 miles of oval-track racing at the other end of the summer, even better.

The problem here, it seems, is there was a lot more “individually” and not much “collectively” about those small news developments. That seems to be how the busiest season in a long time at the country’s oldest racetrack is shaping up.

Three racing weekends.

One independent promoter and two partners in one promotion.

With barely any opportunity to build momentum from one event to the next.

Now, maybe I’m reading this wrong and everyone who knows or cares about the ASA STARS National Tour race on Father’s Day also knows about the NASCAR/ARCA weekend Aug. 25 and the return of IndyCar a week after that.

Goodness knows, I was wrong more than once when I believed the Mile to be dead. I can think of no time I’ve been so happy to be proved wrong. But that’s what Bob Sargent and Track Enterprises did when they brought the then-ARCA Midwest Tour back in 2019 and then State Fair Park board chairman John Yingling and series owner Roger Penske did when they and their staffs put together IndyCar’s first weekend at the track since 2015.

Now, as for the nuggets this week …

Track Enterprises announced Tuesday morning the truck race would be known as the LIUNA 175 and officials made the promotional rounds around town throughout the day with driver Tyler Ankrum. The Laborers’ International Union of North America, which sponsors Ankrum, and the Wisconsin Laborers’ District Council will back the race and put a sizable number of their members in the grandstand.

The “about Track Enterprises” section of the announcement has a reference to bringing “ASA and grassroots races” back to the Mile five years ago and includes a link to Track’s site which then links to the ticket page.

About an hour after the LIUNA announcement, ARCA announced the return of Sprecher craft sodas as title sponsor of its race Aug. 25.

The news release does mention that the race is run in conjunction with the Craftsman Truck Series. The announcement on the ARCA website does have a link to the etix.com page to buy tickets for that day.

Then later in the morning, State Fair Park shared the news of the family-friendly viewing party at Camp Bar on the main square within the fairgrounds. Given that using existing State Fair vendors is seen as an element critical to the success of the weekend, inviting likely ticket-buyers to one of them early makes a ton of sense. (Charging them $10 to park, maybe not so much.)

The news release about the party includes a link to the State Fair Hy-Vee Milwaukee Mile 250s Store, which includes various ticket, hospitality, parking and camping options.

Largely absent, though, is any real feel of cohesiveness to the Mile’s racing season.

Other than the rolling banner ad on the State Fair Park homepage that mentions all three weekends along with the RV park, a job fair and a cream puff centennial celebration, the connection from one race to another to the other seems like an afterthought, if a thought at all.

Listen, no one is saying this stuff is easy.

If it were, the track would be rolling the way it was a generation ago, as if there’d been no CART/IRL split, no extra expense for the grandstand project, no change in the racing fan base in general and there still was an abundant supply of Miller- and Marlboro-sponsored tickets to be had.

To borrow a line from the late Bobby Unser, a four-time winner at Milwaukee, promoters didn’t used to have to stand on their heads and wiggle their ears to get people to come through the gate. That has changed, particularly for short ovals.

The Mile is proof of that. Shuttered Nazareth Speedway is proof of that. The fact that New Hampshire Motor Speedway has one NASCAR weekend, rather than two plus an IndyCar race, is proof of that.

Getting back to Milwaukee, State Fair Park’s main concern is the IndyCar weekend. Track Enterprises’ main concerns are the STARS and NASCAR/ARCA dates.

But the bigger concern of anyone who wants the Mile to not go the way of Nazareth Speedway – the way it seemed to be going eight years ago – is for as many events as possible to be as successful as possible.

That’ll take cooperation the likes of which we haven’t really seen.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee Mile big 2024 season hurt by disjointed promotion effort