After assuming the helm of the American Motorcyclist Association last March, new AMA CEO Rob Dingman made it clear that one of his first orders of business was to get the AMA out of the expensive and time-consuming business of managing its professional racing series.
Dingman got his wish last Friday, when he announced that Daytona Motorsports Group (DMG) was taking over the job of promoting, managing and sanctioning the AMA Pro Racing series, a hallmark of AMA activity for years.
But that, says Dingham, was precisely why the AMA needed to get out of racing. “We needed to have firmer grasp on the legislative and regulatory issues that face us, our member benefits and services have become average at best, and we just had a complete inability to market and promote our professional racing series,” Dingman told a packed house at the Daytona International Speedway media center, where Dingman and DMG head Roger Edmondson made an official announcement of the sale.
And make no mistake, this is a sale, with DMG assuming full ownership of the AMA racing series, a fact Edmondson underscored when he told those gathered, “We are not licensing or borrowing or leasing AMA Pro Racing rights, we are buying them. We will replace the AMA as the sanctioning body for AMA Pro Racing activities.”
Stay tuned, because this is sure to get even more interesting as the AMA continues its quest to reinvent itself. – Richard Backus