We continue our interview with American Flat Track CEO Michael Lock who was instrumental in helping breathe new life into AMA flat track racing. In part two of our two-part interview with Lock, Lock and Alan Cathcart discuss getting AFT on television, Harley-Davidson, some new metal that might be lining up on the start line next year, and the chances of flat track growing to other parts of the world.

Click here to read part one of our interview with Lock.

Tell me about your television deal?

We did not have a television deal this time a year ago. Pro flat track hadn’t been on TV since the early 1980s—it had disappeared from view, it had gone. So, we entered into a dialogue with NBC, who have a very aggressive fast moving dedicated sports channel called NBCSN. I knew about it because it has the rights to English soccer! So I’d seen how they’d promoted a sport that had basically never succeeded in America, and they’d made it succeed. I realized these people know how to promote sport—not just broadcast it, promote it. So, we got into a dialogue with NBC, and they said, “Okay, we’ve had a look at your sport, looks kind of fun, a little hokey but still fun. What do you propose?” “Well, we’d like to show our sport on your channel.” “Yes, of course you would. But how is that going to happen—because if we’re going to come to your races and bring six cameras and a trailer and stuff, we’re going to be charging you a couple of million dollars a year.” Okay, that wasn’t going to happen but here’s the thing, Jim France made some very clever decisions about five years ago when he pushed to set up a broadcast arm called FansChoice.TV, which is a live streaming of a number of different properties within the NASCAR empire. So wherever you are in the world, you can pick up your phone and you can stream flat track, or you can stream some of the Junior NASCAR or IMSA races. So we had infrastructure, we had our own broadcast trailer, we were quite experienced at shooting for streaming, which is not TV but nonetheless, we had the bones of it. The deal we came to with NBC was very interesting. NBC said, “We trust your NASCAR parent, because we do business with them, so if NASCAR Media group is involved we might be able to talk about a deal.” Then we spoke to NASCAR Media in Charlotte, and they said, “Sure, we’d love to help you out.” So we took our streaming set up, we basically gave it some muscle, and worked it out over the winter.

So you provide the cameras, not them?

We provide all the cameras and the trailer, and we shoot the show with NASCAR’s supervision. We then send the show up to Charlotte, and they turn it into a one-hour TV show with all the graphics, the voiceovers, and so on. We present the finished show to NBC who trusts it because it’s come from Charlotte, so they broadcast it. So we leveraged our existing infrastructure plus our parent’s expertise, and NBC said, “We’ve got nothing to lose, we’ll run it for a year.” And we’ve just concluded that, so all 18 rounds.

Are they on again for next year?

I’m working with NBC’s headquarters in Connecticut to finalize next year’s deal that will be spectacular, much improved over this year’s in every way—production values, you name it.

Did Harley-Davidson underestimate the potential that Indian had to be competitive with a brand-new bike? Let’s face it, they and everyone else got blitzed by the FTR750.

I would prefer to say that Indian over-performed. I mean, in your considerable experience in motorcycle racing, Alan, who ever designed and built a brand new race bike, then went and dominated the sport with it in its debut season? That never happens, I didn’t think it would happen, and having looked at some of the contracts that the Indian riders had, clearly Indian didn’t think so, either! Jared Mees and Bryan Smith and Brad Baker are quite a bit better off financially at the end of this year than they thought they would be! So I don’t think Harley was any more guilty than any of us in not seeing this coming.

Will Harley make an effort to come back at them in 2018?

Oh, I’m pretty sure. I know the people at Harley—they’re proud, determined people, and they don’t like coming second at anything. Which is exactly why it’s so great to have them in the sport.

To read the rest of Righting The Ship: Part Two in Cycle News, click here