April 21, 2025 • 55 mins
Elon Werner is the creator of Drag Race Bracket Bonanza (DRBB), a game that has qiuckly taken over the drag racing world. Werner is here to tell all as he explains finally taking the leap to create the game and how it works on the backend; the most important thing he wanted to incorporate in DRBB; the retention rate from week to week and keeping people playing; being a data resource for fans and not just a game with all the information incorporated; a run-down of the many prizes available to players; the range of the game reaching other countries; getting the industry to buy into a new game and have it sweep the sport; always thinking about what is next and continuing to evolve the game.
Original music created by Tony Monge.
Follow me here: https://linktr.ee/kellycrandall
Original music created by Tony Monge.
Follow me here: https://linktr.ee/kellycrandall
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hey, everyone, Welcome to the Racing Writers Podcast. I'm your host,
Kelly crandall. Our guest today is Elin Warner, the creator
of Drag Race Bracket Bonanza. This is an absolutely amazing,
so much fun can fuel your competitive fire if you're
like me game for n h A drag racing. Drag
Race Bracket Bananza is exactly how it sounds. It's a
(00:27):
bracket style game because drag racing is all about brackets.
Follow the ladder on race day, who's going to advance,
who's making their way through the ladder. So with drag
Race Bracket Bananza, you sign up, you can play for free,
and what you do every Sunday morning or Saturday night
whenever you fill out your bracket is pick each winner
through the bracket. So you get to the finals, you
picked your winner, and so on and so on down
(00:49):
the line. Elan is the creator of this game, as
I said, and I love it so much and I
want to get other people involved in it because I
think it's been so fantastic for the sport of drag
racing that our conversation today is quite simply just digging
into how this game came about in all of the
behind the scenes and nerdy aspects of making it work.
So we have so much to learn from today. Hopefully
it's going to make you interested to sign up if
(01:11):
you're not already playing. So let's jump in and learn
all about it. Here is Elan Warner on the Racing
Writers Podcast. All right, so we're going to bring Ellen
into the conversation. And you know, first off top of
my head, very important question. When you look at your
(01:32):
name and you look at how it's spelled, how many
people want to call you like Elon Musk now okay?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
And I will tell you it is so funny. If
you remember the old Sports Center commercials that were like
in the nineties, there's a guy named Michael Jordan, and
it was like him doing all these things and like
the level of disappointment, like the flower delivery guy or
the Matre d restaurants when they saw Michael Jordan was
coming in and it was like this regular business guy.
I now get that in certain circumstances, they're like, oh,
(02:03):
you're not the Elon I was looking for, And I'm like, well,
first of all, it's Elon, not Elon, And second of all,
I'm very sorry you're disappointed that I'm not a bond villain,
all right.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Well, like I said, I just need to clear the
air on that because internally and in my head sometimes
it makes me laugh because I do the same thing
when I'm thinking about, oh, I need to send them
an email or send them a text, and I re
so often I'll catch myself and I'll do it because
it's just it's funny how it's pronounced differently than it
spells yes, and how it's looked. And now, of course
we all associate that with the other guy.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
So it's out there and it's funny that when I
was in high school, there's Elon College in high Point,
North Carolina, and they used to be the Fighting Christians,
like that was their mascot, so I could get shirts
that said Elon Fighting Christians, so it looked like Elon
Fighting Christians, and I thought that was the coolest thing ever.
Well then they changed to the Phoenix, and it's not
(02:56):
nearly as cool, but that was kind of like seeing
you know, Elin pop up as like a sporting event
or in headlines. But now it's really wild because it's
like everywhere my name is very it's just very funny.
So I am that other guy. Yeah, and I was
here first. He's younger than me, and I've thought about
(03:17):
just for funsies, just you know, throwing out on Twitter
or X or whatever, like, hey, I was here first,
But then I'm afraid I'll get like banned from Twitter
because he owns Twitter. That would be just like see.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
You know, yeah, don't play with fire, right.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
So that's a good little pr one to one is
you have to before you go to social media think
about how it's going to be received, and then I
usually just hit the leap.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
That's a whole sepherate conversation, my man, that's a whole podcast.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
We actually touched on that. So we've go back to
a previous podcast and that's been covered.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yes, go to uh gosh, well it's been so long
ago now. I'll think of it later, of course, after
after we do this. But yes, we did do a
podcast talking about I think it was John Forrest's accent
and PR and media.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Afterwards, crisis management, all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
That's right, So you were here first, though you're also
doing far more important work in my opinion, because we
need to talk about drag race. Bracket bonanza, of course,
my favorite thing, and I tweeted a couple weeks ago,
I think before the season started, and I truly believe it.
I have been just blown away Elan of how far
this has come in a short amount of time, because
(04:26):
you kind of brought me in as you were starting
it out, kind of beta testing it so to see
what it is today. That's why I want to have
this conversation because it is so much fun. It is
truly kind of sweeping the industry, it feels like, which
I want to get into that as well, but I
want to dig first into the backstory of just going
ahead and doing it, because I know you've discussed how
(04:47):
this is not a new idea in the drag racing world.
Somebody just had to do it, So what was finally
the kick in the pants to take that step and
do it.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
We launched it in tru twenty twenty three, so a
US national twenty twenty three is when it went public.
I would say I've been having conversations with people about
it since at least twenty twenty with guys that like
Red Moon Marketing with Brian Loans, and I spent two
hours talking about it one night. I talked to some
(05:17):
NHA people I've talked to drivers about it and it
was just like, yeah, we should do that, or somebody
did something kind of like that, and I don't know what.
Over the off season before twenty twenty three started, I
was just like, I got to quit talking about it
and I have to figure out how to do it.
And the real impetus for it was Aidan Lampkin, who
(05:39):
is the it brains behind it. Is a graduate of
Colorado School of the Mines and he is a computer genius.
His real job he works for a credit card company,
like in their fraud department. I mean, so he's like
legit brainiac. And we have a family contest circle where
(06:01):
we do March Madness together with the two families we
do in NFL. If you win March Madness, you get
to pick a random contest that we all have to
do between to bridge the gap. Highly competitive. There's a
traveling Trophy. We can get into that later. But he
actually built a bracket for like the Strongest Man contest
(06:25):
that we did, and so he kind of and I
was like, he kind of inadvertently showed me how to
we could make a bracket that could potentially be functional
for drag race Brack Bonanza. So I hired him in
the beginning of twenty twenty three and said, can you
make this idea a reality? And we started internally. He
(06:49):
made it, We got the website, all the back end stuff,
and then we started testing it. And you were really
one of the early people outside of a circle of
about that got to participate. And you know, we just started.
You know, it was very what it started at versus
what it is today. Like anything, it's light years difference.
(07:12):
You know. We just wanted it to work, and we
spend a lot of time trying to break it, like
you know, user interface, you know all that stuff. So
that's it was just finally, I just I'm a guy
that I'll think about something. My brain is just a
big mush pod of ideas, and I don't get them
out and do them or write them down. I can't
(07:33):
sleep a bit when you.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Talk about getting it to work. First off, it's very
simple in simple terms for users and for players, it's
very much if you follow drag racing right, you pick
the winner of each matchup and move on so forth
down the line. But behind the scene, this is where
my nerve comes out. How does it work? How does
the scoring work, who's keeping track of it? Because you
(07:56):
guys are very quick also and updating it almost in
real time. So give me the nerdy behind the scenes of.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
How does this mak You're okay, put your nerd seatbelt on,
because one of the unintended consequences of this is we
are now a massive data resource because we wanted to
make it user friendly for fans, so you need and
for people also for people that aren't fans. So if
you tell your buddy I want you to play, they
(08:23):
need to kind of have some context pictures, some stats.
Not overwhelming, but just like why would I pick John
Force overrun caps? Well, you know, is Angie Smith really
that much better than Gaye Herrera. So we started in
twenty twenty three moving forward with putting every you know,
all the qualifiers in with their ATM mile prowor so
(08:44):
that data all gets stored by race by qualifying and
then we go into race day and then on a
race day on the back end we put in manually
we type in a lapse time mild prower reaction time,
and then what happened if Red lit cross the center
line their car wouldn't start, And then we note the
(09:04):
winner of the race. That stuff all gets cashaped, so
mean we go round by around. So you're storing all
this historical data. So as we're going forward in twenty
twenty three, we are gathering all that data and storing it.
But at the same time, I was going backwards and
adding the data for the previous races for twenty twenty three,
(09:29):
so you could look at someone's record before the US
National started. And then we're like, well, go back to
twenty twenty three, let's go back to twenty twenty two.
Let's go back to twenty twenty one. So we have
the run data going back almost fifteen years, and then
we can compile that and show it. That's how you
(09:51):
have all the route like on the truck, their cards,
on their statu sheet has all that data. The cool
thing is we can and this is where our kind
of alignment with nhr plaan HRA comes into effect. Is
that when you're filling out your bracket, you're essentially publicly
(10:12):
saying this is my confidence level in this person. We
can see in a real time arc how the confidence
is going from like Saturday when the brackets open, until
Sunday morning. So as soon as we lock the brackets.
On Sunday morning, we run a report and I don't
know if you've seen the pigraphs we do that show
(10:32):
who the fans think will win. So we have that
data in real time, which we're now figuring out how
to utilize that data for plane hrra that if you're
a person and living in a place that's legal to gamble,
(10:54):
you know on that deal. I would like to know
if thousands of people are filling out their brackets and
then fifty five percent of them think Ron Caps is
going to beat paul Lee, even though Pauline might be
the number seven qualifyer and Caps as the number ten qualifier,
why do they what? Do they know something? Do they
(11:15):
not know something? So on the data side, we're creating
and we're on the back end, So I spend ninety
percent of my time making drag Race back of Bonanza
is so cool for the user, for the player, for
fun for kids. But then there's ten percent where I'm
trying to really figure out what do I have? How
(11:35):
could it also be utilized in this information world playing
hr just fan nerd stuff like we can now we've
partnered with drag Race Reference on the stats for the
back end, so we'll be able to add in head
to head matchups, so you'll be able to see Ron
Capps's record versus Buddyhole or you know, Antron versus Steve
(11:59):
before you make your picks. Also not as a career number,
as a race number, you know. So it's it is
so cool. And the way it works is I literally
am at a computer at the race and I'm watching
the race, and I just sit there and type in
(12:21):
round by round and then as soon as the round
is over, I hit submit and it gets uploaded to
the site and it's added so realistically, and we could
submit race by race like but that just you know,
it's just easier to just do it them all together,
manually double check them and then upload them so that
(12:42):
after E one of Top Fuel you see the results
and usually it's about a five minutes, so we try
to keep it going. N h R A or drag
racing in general, is a wonky sport. We get it
affected by a lot of outside issues. We're relying on
the n h R eight. You provide us the qualifying order,
(13:03):
race results, things like that, and sometimes, like anybody, they
make mistakes and the first year twenty twenty three in Vegas,
Bob Task and Bob Height qualified one to two. Taska
one Height two qualifying order goes out. We put it
on our site. People start filling out brackets, and then
(13:25):
thirty minutes later in Ha' is like, oh, Taska had
a problem. He's actually the number two qualifier. So I'm
at a restaurant in Vegas on the phone of my
IT guy in Colorado. Okay, we closed the brackets. Four
hundred people had filled out brackets already, so we closed
the brackets and then went to work on changing it.
(13:46):
And then how do we handle those four hundred people
getting their brackets correct? And we were able to most
of them. It really didn't affect it too bad. But
then we reached out to the one hundred or so
and we're like, hey, this happened. We're going to open
the brackets up and you need to go in and
change your bracket. And we kind of worked their way
through it. And that's probably the thing I'm most proud
(14:06):
of is the team that I have working. Abby's on
my team, Aiden Peyton's our graphic design person. Is how
responsive we are on social media that if you are emails,
you email us a technical question, like I've walked players
through filling out a bracket this year on the phone,
(14:27):
like they just say, I'm having a problem. Log again,
I'm having this, and we it's like, we understand you're
immediately trying to do it and it's important to you
and we want to make sure you can play. So
we handle every case and it gets less and less.
User faces getting better, people are getting more accustomed to it.
But I don't know how much longer we'll be to
(14:48):
do that because we've now at the end of the
first year, we had just over fifteen hundred people sign
up to play in seven races. At the end of
last year we were almost to four thousand, and we're
now over four thousand signed up players and that they
(15:09):
are not all playing every weekend. We learned a lot
about going for twenty races last year. It's a little
bit more like fantasy football versus March madness. You can
get twenty five million people to fill out of bracket
one time. Getting people to fell out twenty of them
is closer to fantasy football. But we have three We
have three hundred and fifty leagues in Braca Bonanza. Whether
(15:32):
there are four people leagues or are up to one
hundred and twenty people, you know, So that mindset of
getting people to play, making it easy for him is
a huge, huge part of what we're trying to do
and to make it fun and get people engaged in
the sport.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Yeah, all right, there's a couple of things in there
that you started to hit on that I want to
ask specifically about. But first off, the graphics you mentioned
specifically with social media have been tremendous because you were
talking about really, you guys, have become not just a game,
but kind of information overload maybe for people who want
it right. So there's grafts and pie charts and stats
(16:09):
and all of that. But on the flip side of that,
what were some of the important aspects of building this
elan that you wanted to incorporate for the more casual,
not die hard race fan.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
The number one thing was photos. I got my ass
kicked a couple of years ago in the NFL playoff
game that ESPN did when you could like pick like
which quarterback was going to throw for the most touchdowns
in a game or what running back was going to
run for the most yards by a high school sophomore,
Peyton who's actually my graphics person now literally picked and
(16:45):
that was when the Bengals were going on their tear
picked Joe Burrow because he had good hair and agree smile.
She didn't know anything. She's picking running backs because she
thought there the way they wore their U uniform, they
look good in their uniform and how it matched their
I mean it was like the most insane, but so
(17:07):
she I had to have pictures. You had to have
something where if someone wanted to pick I want to
pick all women racers. I want to pick African you know,
I'm an African American guy. I want to you know,
I want to support you know, Antron or you know,
Richard Gadson spand you know, I wanted to make that
a touch point. And then the data about where they're
(17:28):
from and do they drive like a Chevy or a
Toyota or a fork because they're passionate about supporting their brands.
So those were the real touch points and just enough
stance so you could just kind of know who was
had had success and then who was a long shot
because some people just like to do, you know, take
(17:50):
the underdog. So those were the biggest touch points where
photos and you know making it where they always I
was a manic about on the bracket when it's public,
when it's published, that there's no ghost heads, that we
have a photo for everybody you qualify for an A
(18:11):
nature a race, you're gonna have your photo there, whether
it's your first race or your five hundred race. And
I go around to the pits on for like we
now scan the entry list, make sure everyone has their photo.
We have a driver database and like Steve Christman race
this weekend in Arizona, so I went to Chris's pitt,
(18:32):
introduced myself, explain what barka Bonanza was, and it's like,
can I get your head shot? So I have your
headshot in there. I did the same thing for John
Capps and Funny Car, and it's it's a slipper dew
because it also gives me a chance to talk to racers,
which I love to do. But in Funny Car there
were twenty guys and caps. When I went and talked
to him, he wasn't qualified yet, but I was like, hey,
(18:54):
I'm going to take your picture so that when you qualify,
you'll be in the bracket with a head shot, you know.
So that's that's the biggest is I think the photos
make a big difference and just having a little bit
of date about where they're from.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Yeah, I completely agree with that. I think you know.
As a side note over here in NASCAR, one of
the reasons that I've tweeted that I like what the
CW is doing with their coverage as they've come in
this year with the Xfinity series is their graphics include
what the driver's car looks like and what the driver's
headshot is. Because again to your point, the fans need
to know who they're rooting for. So if they see
(19:31):
them in the garage or you know, at the grocery
store or whatever, they know who those people are. Yes,
you need to recognize them. You also touched on because
I was going to ask how many people are playing
now here we are in it so, because to reiterate,
it started the final couple white races in twenty twenty three.
Twenty twenty four was the first full year. Here we
(19:52):
are now in twenty twenty five. So you said over
four thousand. You were touching on their retention rate, and
I wanted to ask about that too, because it is
something you made a good comparison with, like fantasy football.
There's going to be people who like me, are very
competitive and die hard, and I'm gonna set that thing
every week. But I'm curious about what the trends you
all have seen of how many people are doing that,
(20:15):
who comes in maybe plays it one week every couple weeks,
or what are the trends there we are.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
That's our goal for twenty twenty five is to figure
out you know, the biggest thing was when you first
started the first seven races of twenty twenty three was
reminding people how to play, to just play. It was new,
and you get busy on Saturday night after race or
Sunday morning, you forget about it. We have time zone issues.
One of the races the first year was Ready that
(20:43):
had a nine to thirty East Coast start, and at
that point, basically forty five percent of our players are
from West of the Rockies, so a nine thirty start
was a six thirty lock time. Like basically if you
didn't have your brackets filled out by six thirty in
the morning and fill them out, and a lot of
people woke up and try to fill out their brackets
(21:04):
and they were locked because the race had already started.
So we have to factor that in, so our arc
is just reminding people at the Gator Nationals this year,
we did a lot of hey, the race is starting
at ten thirty in the morning. If you're on the
West Coast, fill out your bracket on Saturday night. It's
(21:24):
a lot of communication. We now can do text updates
to just remind folks. If you opt in, you get
a text reminder of hey, brackets are closing in two hours.
We try not to bomb people with that stuff because
they got a lot going on and it's Sunday and
they could be church or Saturday night. When we're trying
to communicate with people. We're now reaching out, setting up
(21:46):
some functionality of hey, you haven't played in three races,
you know, want to just remind you, Hey, you know,
this is how you can be notified, and trying to
get some survey feedback on why they're not Is it
just simply they're not having fun, or they have different interests,
or they were only at a race in Gainesville and
(22:07):
we found this out that a lot of people will
sign up at the race. We do a lot of
on site gorilla marketing, Like I literally went abby came
up with a good idea. We used to. I have
little handouts with QR codes and little stickers we give out,
and I would when people are in line for autographs,
ad mission, foods or skag or wherever, I would walk
(22:27):
the line and just chat them up about drag Exprack
Bananasa and hey, this is game is out there if
you want to play for free, here's a cure code.
While you're waiting in line, and then we do that.
We do when they're doing the track walk for NHRA.
You got a whole massive people. When they're coming back
from the track walk, I would give them the information.
I didn't want to give it out when they started,
(22:48):
because last thing I wanted is a bunch of drag
Exprack and Bananaza flyers on the track and then I
get yelled at by the track crew guys. So I
waited until they came back and that we saw some
tracks on that a Gator Nationals. Abby just was like,
I'm just gonna go up in the grand stands on
Sunday morning. These people are just sitting in the stands
at nine o'clock waiting for an eleven o'clock start or
(23:10):
whatever with their phones out, and so we did that
and she was really successful. Now, she did get some
fan feedback about just general Nhara stuff because people thought
she worked for the nh Ura and she was like,
I'm not really that person. But there were people beside
her that saw her getting not really ramed, but like
getting some pointed criticism that were like basically took pity
(23:33):
on and we're like, hey, I really feel bad for
give me that flyer because I'll sign up right now.
And so I went through the grand stands in Arizona
this weekend for like forty five minutes and basically just
walk the grand stands, chatting people up if they're out
on their phone. I was like, hey, here's this game.
It's free. Anyone any age can play. You just scan
the QR code or go to drag raspractupananza dot com.
(23:56):
And we had almost one hundred people sign up before
or the race. What we found is you have to
remind them that they can play every week. A lot
of people just thought it was events specific, so they
were educating them on just because you signed up at
Seattle doesn't mean you have to wait until Seattle to
(24:17):
play again. You can play every weekend. But some our
fans sometimes think of and this is where it gets
into the bigger universe of NHA of someone comes to
the Winternationals because it's local and they've always gone to
the Winternationals, but they don't really watch it on TV
(24:40):
or they don't really follow it because it's like a
singular event in their life. I go to the Winternationals.
That's what my family does, and I really love it,
and caps is great and Antroine's great, but then they
don't really truly follow it like on. So now we're
working on how do we get them to understand Yeah,
in person, you see it and it's truly awesome. Here's
(25:01):
how you stay in contact with it for the rest
of the year. So we trying to do short contests.
The four Wide Cup is coming up, which is a
contest for just if you get the most points for
the two four wide races, we do a trophy. Even
though there's going to be three four wide races this year,
we're still keeping the two Wide Cup as a standalone,
the two race four Wide Cup as a standalone, and
(25:24):
then the Charlotte two will be in the countdown.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
The text messages you mentioned. Social media has has grown exponentially.
I think you also do. There's some email pushes, right,
There's some newsletters or stats that go out there. There's
also been sponsors that have been brought on board, which
goes back to my original point of just how much
this has grown from the outside looking in from the
(25:48):
inside though, Elan is has this grown the way that
it needs to or you hoped that it would find
I mean, con considering again, you only started a year,
not even a year and a half, I wouldn't say ago, yeah, yes,
and no it.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
I tell my wife this is an investment. This is
completely being funded by Werner Games Entertainment, which is a
separate company from my PR company. And I tell people
an interta that They're like, what's going on with braacka Bananza?
And I was like, I'll tell you I could have
a kick ass super cop car and a totor home
for what I'm currently investing in drag Race Brack of Bananza.
(26:30):
And people in the know know that that is that's
a close to a six figure investment, and it is
truly a passion project for me. I'm you know, I
don't want to say I'm seeing light at the end
of the tunnel, but we've been super Summit jumped on
board very early. Jim Greenleaf was a player, saw the
opportunity started giving us some gift certificates which we gave
(26:53):
to winners. They saw a great response from that, and
then they are the sponsor for the plaques this year.
So I'm big on and we can get in is prizes.
I think we give what some of the most awesome
prizes for a free game out there any sport. I
challenge any other sport to say, hey, this is what
you get for a free game. Peak stepped up and
(27:17):
this year they're sponsoring our Monday Peak Peak position recap.
And that was something that actually came from a conversation
with the player that played for the first time, and
they got the Friday Denz Deats tip sheet, they got
the Saturday hey the brackets are open reminder or email,
(27:37):
they got the Sunday Morning quick reminder email, and they played.
But then they got to like Tuesday, and like, I
wonder how I did. I don't really remember, you know,
I wasn't really It's busy working and I'm going on
the next risk and they're like, if you had a
Monday email that just kind of put a bow on
everything it would kind of close the loop. So we
(27:58):
did that and that that probably the last six races
of last season, and that became our second most open email. Obviously,
the Saturday night brackets are open Email was the number one.
It's got about a sixty five percent open rate. The
Monday one is close to fifty percent, and it kind
of spikes and stuff. So Peak totally grabbed onto that
(28:22):
with their all their peak performance and they're doing a
sign to win contests and they're also very socially active,
so that's been huge. They have their own league for
their Peak Squad and that's taken off. We started a
track challenge to again just get more tracks involved and
rhode X Coffee stepped up to kind of take that on.
(28:45):
So we still are finding sponsors for individual races. Bernie
sponsored the Gator Nationals because they just wanted to own
everything related to the Gator Nationals. We've had, you know,
Laris Mercer's I did a deal with Matt Hagen last
year with Take Cattle Company, and that was that was
more of a trade deal because Hagen's been so great
(29:06):
supporting Brack of Binanza and retweeting and doing all my
crazy requests for stuff, and I wanted to help his
cattle company, so we gave away. They actually had a
product category that was like the Junior Bonanza, which was
like one hundred pounds of ground b or something, so
we they gave us some of that and then we
(29:26):
promoted it as a prize for the event winners. So
that that has been super satisfying also, and the sponsor
involvement and they're seeing the benefit of it, which is
really cool, and that that I'm hopeful that that will
grow as we move forward and can show our players
(29:50):
are reactive, they are supporting our sponsors, they're knowledgeable in
h RA fans, and you know, as we get more
of them than it kind of becomes, you know, more
impactful marketing.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
I wanted to go next to the prizes that you
were talking about because it seems like there's always new
ones coming out. So this is a part of the
conversation whereas we keep talking about this and hopefully we're
getting people interested as they listen, it's like, Okay, well
what do I get out of playing?
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Right?
Speaker 1 (30:13):
That's always the big thing. So you said there's plaques,
those are race Pacific. There's there's been belts that have
been introduced. There's a helmet that was introduced. I think,
as you said, there's more coming up. So let's dig
into all right, we've got people to sign up, Well,
what are they going to get?
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Yeah, so the number one thing we do is the plaques,
and that you're talking about, did I expect it to
get to this point? Every race there's an overall winner
based on who gets the most points, and then there's
a top field winner who gets the most points just
in top fuel, funny car, pro stock and prostoc motorcycle.
(30:50):
For a traditional race. There's five plaques for every national
event that we have a little corner of the pressure
room set up and the dry divers will come in,
they'll do all their post race stuff and then they
we get them to sign the plaques. The thing that's
amazing now is it has become for the drivers part
of the post race experience. They know, they do the
(31:15):
stage stuff on the track, they do Winter Circle, they
come in the pressure to talk to the media and
now they signed the driver's back bonanza plax like that's
part of and Abby was in there at the Gator
Nationals when Dallas Glenn was doing his media stuff with
the backdrop and talking to all the media, and Gabe
Herrera came in and saw Dallas was still going and
(31:37):
then immediately she goes. I could tell he was looking
around to see where the brack of Bonanza plax were,
Like he knew that was part of the process and
we get them. This past weekend for Arizona Nationals was
probably one of our better plaque weekends because I try
to get the drivers to personalize them beyond just signing them.
So Sean Langdon signed the top fuel play back to
(32:01):
back Sean Laney because he'd won two years in a row.
Paulie won his first funny Car race, so he signed it.
First funny Car race, Paulie first funny car went Paulie.
And then Greg Anderson had this crazy deal where his
car stalled and really you know, and this whole crazy deal,
(32:24):
so I had him sign the plaque. My craziest win ever,
Greg Anderson. You know, when Doug Coletta won his fiftieth race,
he signed it. Fiftieth win. When Gage Herrera was on
the tear of all the races, he literally was chronicling
them on plaques. Ninth in a row, tenth in a row,
eleventh in a row, and I think I don't remember
(32:46):
if I got Chase van Zant. It was Chase fan
Zant's first pro pro like bike win ever, and I
was really kind of pushing him to like write like
Gaye Terrera Street Killer kind of deal.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Yeah, broke the streak.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Broke the streak. So the plaques are the most race
to race universal thing. Then we do get drivers to
sign brack oft Bananza hats, and we do social media
promotions with those. You know, if you share stuff, you know,
we have decals we send out, well, we'll do surveys
(33:18):
and we do random things like that. We actually have
certificates for some races. When we did the Legends deal
with the US Nationals, we had Larry Dixon do a bracket,
Warren Johnson, Ace McCullough and Angel if your bracket was
better than theirs, we selected ten people randomly and they
got like certificates of achievement. They're like, hey, congratulations, you
(33:40):
picked a bracket better than this legend. And then to
get people to play more on a shorter commitment, like
we have the two race series for the four White Cup,
we do trophies for that. We do the Majors, which
I have in contention that we should have four majors,
but the three we have right now are the Gator Nationals,
(34:03):
the Winter Nationals, and the US Nationals. So Katie Buttera,
who's Apple Art Girls as an artist out of Indy,
does really amazing. Souff made a major's trophy for US
last year that had like three flags on it and
they had Winternationals highlights graphically in US now it is
really super cool, like so cool that I was like,
(34:23):
dang and I should have had her just make one
extra just for me, which she liked them so much,
she made one for herself and I was like, dang it,
I should have said, just charge me for another one.
So we do that for the majors, and then we
do championship belts for the countdown so you can play.
If you come in the middle of the season, you
(34:44):
may not have a chance to win the overall, but
there's still opportunities to win stuff. You know. We did
champ belts last year that we got the World champions
to sign at Pomona. And then the big thing is
the helmet. Impact gave us a helmet last year and
we had every drive ever that made the countdown signed
the helmet, and then we had the World champs signed
(35:07):
the visor and that was the overall winner. The guy
that had played all season got that. And again, this
is a game that's free that anyone can play, and
we've mailed prizes. We can get into this too about
where people are playing, but that's the whole price. My
deal is, I want to have the coolest prizes. I
want to get people something that would not necessarily get
(35:29):
you don't have to be present to when we mail
them to you, you know, So that's just a huge
deal for me. I want people to be like, I'm
playing this for free, and if I'm not successful this weekend,
I'm going to try again next week because man, I
want to get a really cool plaque that's personal and
it's signed and all that stuff, and just as a.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Sign not too. There's also merch. I recently discovered that
people can go buy hats or shirts or whatever.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
It may be.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
All right, so you said it there. That is an
interesting thing when you're talking about kind of the data
and getting people involved. And we were talking about earlier
about retention rate and having people sign up, So dig
into that a little more of where you can see
where people are playing from. Because the cool thing about
drag racing is I mean, listen, there's motorsports all over
the world, but drag racing. Yes, NHRA is well known
(36:20):
in the United States, but there's also what the FIA, Yeah, Australia.
It's not like this is an unknown commodity. So are
you seeing it to where people all over the world
are signing up?
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Yes, and we have racers that are representing other countries.
Ida z Edderstrom, the Quadras, you know, so we have
We've had We've shipped plaques for winners all to forty
three states. We've shipped them to six different countries. We
consistently sent prizes to Canada, you know, so we sent
(36:56):
prizes to Canada, have sent prizes to the UK, have
sent prizes to Germany, have sent prizes to Australia. We
had a winner in the Philippines that thank goodness. I
sent him an email and he's like, I live in
the Philippines, but I'm coming back to the US for
a trip to see my brother in about a month.
(37:16):
He lives in Las Vegas. Just mail my plack to
Las Vegas. So it was a difference in fifteen dollars
in shipping versus seventy five dollars in shipping.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
But but, and I don't mean interrupt you, but the
hook here for people is that so many times with
games or gambling or whatever meat, whatever it may be,
you know, the fine print is, oh, you have to
be a legal resident or oh it's not open to
this country or this state. You guys are open to everybody.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Yeah, because our prizes are less than five hundred dollars,
there's no quid pro quo. It's you know, we're not
offering you know, it's basically you're just kind of coming
to the site for free playing, and then you know
you're opting into emails standard stuff. But we're hyper sensitive
(38:08):
to not sharing that data, you know, bombing people tons
of emails. But yeah, we have and we can see
like get super nerd. We use AWS on our back end,
which is Amazon works just whatever. But you can watch
like there's a map of the world and when we
open the brackets, you can see little dots literally filling
(38:30):
out brackets and you can just watch it go across
time zones on the country and we can just see
people other people playing here. You know, and so that's
one of the graphics we're going to show is here's
where people have played so far in twenty twenty five,
and it is truly people are playing around the world,
and that to me is also as the guy that
(38:52):
got this started, makes my head just right. That just
the fact that it's a thing and that people are
playing and that people you know, have Now I've always
been a behind the scenes guy on the pr side.
My job is to promote other people. But now I
have this thing where I'm the public face of So
(39:13):
when people will come up to me at a race
and engage me in conversation about Break of Bananza or
refer to me as the Break of Bananza guy, or
to my daughter's mortification on an autograph or a picture
with me, it's like, it's really cool, but it's also
kind of surreal. But that people are I mean, I've
(39:35):
had a mom come up to me in reading last
year it was like, I love Brack of Bonanza so
much because I play with my son and that's like
our connection, you know, and guys are playing with their
dads and they're not in the same place, but Brack
of Bonanza is kind of connecting them race to race,
which is really cool.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
I want to have you back on in the future
elin to talk more about who you are and what
you do, because I love the communication side, and I'm
sure you have stories for days of people that you've
worked with, and I love digging into, just again the
media side and how you know folks like you try
to elevate drivers and so on and so forth. But
I want to save that for a future show. So
a couple more things before we wrap up here is
(40:19):
as this has gone on now the last couple of years,
the drivers are in on it. As you said, it
gets mentioned on broadcasts, it's talked, it's widely talked about
when you're at the racetrack. What was that work like
to get people in the industry to buy into something
like this?
Speaker 2 (40:36):
It was for the four people that follow me on Instagram.
You'll you will get in my stories, which I'm terrible at.
I motivate myself with. I got was lucky enough to
meet Kobe Bryant many years ago and have the conversation
about black bomba and how he pushed himself as a
basketball player to get better, and that just stuck with me.
(40:58):
So if you following my story. All you're getting is
David Goggins, shocko. All these guys their motivation of you
know how you just have to run into a wall
and get knocked down and get back up. Because when
I started, the NHA was very understandably wary of it.
(41:21):
They just didn't know what it was. They were in
the process of putting play in h RA together and
I just came out gang busters like I was just like,
if I'm going to do it, I'm going to just
give out flyers and I'm going to put QR codes everywhere.
And it was just like a full on gorilla marketing.
I'm getting drivers to do stuff I'm trying. I'm putting
logos on race cars. And the pushback was, you know,
(41:44):
so I write PA announcements for some of my teams
and I give them an announcer. So of course there
are teams are like, we'll support Dragger's back Bonanza. So
I'm writing, like, right, and Bonanza is part of one
of their sponsors, and they're like, well, the logo is
not really big enough on the car to warren a PA.
So that kind of opened can of works. There were
(42:04):
sponsors in the manufacturer's midway that were loving the game
that were like, hey, we have stand ups in our
pit area. If you make a sign with the QR code,
we'll put that in our pit area when we don't
have autograph signs. I was like, that's gretigo, but you
probably need to clear that with NHAA because I work
on a track operator side as well with a motorplex,
so I knew there's some rules. And so then sponsors
(42:26):
were finding out that they didn't have passed through rights
in their own display, and then that became a thing,
and I'm trying to get it mentioned on the Fox
broadcast and they're sensitive to gambling, and that became a thing.
So it was constantly me and there's so many great
people in h A that were supportive that were just like, hey,
we're just trying to we want this to be successful,
(42:48):
but we've got to figure it out. We can't get
ahead of ourselves out of our ski So it was
me constantly trying things, getting my hand slapped, and then
going okay, how can we work around this? And they
were now it is much We have a much better
relationship with Play Natura, but it's still trying to figure
out how we mesh the two because drag race brack
(43:10):
of Bananza is a gateway drug to play nature a
All fantasy is, you know, all fantasy is a at
some level a mechanism to get you to start taking
a chance on winning money. If you think you're really
good at fantasy, Let's see if I can put my
money where I'm about this and guys will have you know,
(43:31):
and and that's fine. If you have, you know, you
have the means you're of age, it's legal in your state.
That's great. But brack of Bonanza to me, is just
a great marketing tool that is still being developed and
figured out to how you know, how it can all
work and maximize and promote the sport and promote the
drivers and all that stuff. But the driver's getting involved
(43:54):
has been great in the Nature app. It was so funny.
I did some marketing with the HR last year and
we can have a continuing marketing relationship. But I did
an email blast and I paid to have a certain
number of email sent and I got an email back
or from one of the ntry marketing guys. It's like, hey,
we have a problem with the headline in your email.
(44:17):
And I'm like, okay, what is, He goes, well, it
has to say NHA Marketing partner, and then your subject
line is that okay. And at this point, this was
like twenty twenty three where I'd been like doing and
I was like, yeah, you want to send an email
out to like thousands of people that says I'm an
NHRY marketing partner. Hell yeah, do that. So then they
(44:42):
send it out and then I had a screenshot of that,
and then I blasted that out to everybody that hey,
re legit, we're an entry marketing partner now, and that
you know, that became a thing, you know, because but
so it's constantly push and getting knocked down and having
(45:02):
things fail and just figuring out, how do we make
it better? This didn't work, how do we make it
bit which, you know.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Like anything, it's just constantly pushing and showing people that
it's you know, this is good for you, it's good
for me, this is it's harmless. And for those who
don't know, just quick note the play NHA is the
official gambling side of nhr A. Now that is that
has been introduced. So that's why you know, people hear
a lot about that too. But drag race Breck at Bonanza.
(45:33):
There's no money involved, as you said, it's free to
sign up, and you're just you're trying to win prizes.
So all right, one last thing, because again we're going
to have a whole separate conversation in the future about
more stuff. But you made a comment earlier, Elan about
how your mind is always going and kind of just
how this came to be. So I take that to
mean that your mind is going to continue to go
(45:53):
of what's next, what do we keep doing with it?
How do we make it bigger? Right, I'm assuming that's
the next part.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
The next part is incorporating you know, to me, I'm
a huge football fan, but you know, Fox does a
good job of you know, on the on again on
the fantasy wagering side where you can win Terry Bradshaw's
one hundred thousand dollars I'm now looking at and we
had great success with the Legends for the US Nationals.
(46:22):
Is how do we with our marketing partners, like with Peek,
We're going to probably hopefully have like Alex Martin fill
out of bracket. She's there, Dragon Drive person, have her
fill out of bracket and then you can pick against
Alex Martin. I would love to have Kletus McFarland do
a bracket. I would love to have David Freiberger do
(46:43):
a bracket. Freg Burger, if you're listening, I'm straight up
slow rolling you on this. I have not asked for anything,
but like I was fortunate to do n HRA a
TV with Loans and Freiburger. Just they called me and
they're like, hey, do you want to talk about brack
of Bonanza while we're you know, in some downtime. And
(47:04):
it took all Kelly, you know me, it took all
my energy. I'm standing between Loans, who is one of
my all time favorite people in the sport, and I
have not had much interaction with David Freiberger, but he's
so awesome on roadkill, on all the things he does
that I just literally just wanted to grab him by
the shoulders and say, will you just please tweet something
(47:26):
about drag race brackup Bananza to your seven hundred thousand followers,
Just if you would just possibly say we were cool,
that would be so awesome. But I did it. I
just totally played it cool. It's like, Okay, this is great.
So those are the things where there's a you know,
I read all of Malcolm Gladwell's stuff. I'm like, what
exactly is the tipping point for brack of Bonanza. I
(47:48):
think we're getting closer Summit and Peak and Rhodex Coffee
coming on board is a little bit of it. You know,
that's a tipping point to see the sponsorship side of it,
more players coming in, the driver supporting it, NHRAE becoming
realizing oh this does benefit us both and I am
(48:12):
you know, and I think a lot of people are like, how,
you know, are you making money at this? I am not.
I'm not making money. My goal is to if I
can get it to a break even level, braackup Binanza
will go on forever. And you know, it's creeping that way.
I'm seeing, you know, like progress and things are coming together,
(48:33):
but it's still got a long long ways to go.
But it's fun. I mean, I just love the challenge
of it. I love the satisfaction of people playing and
not going what will I will always. I've had some
people approach me with you know, we have nine million
tequila companies involved in NHRAE. We've had some interest from
Tequilla Company. It's like, hey, how could we be involved,
(48:55):
And I have said I don't really know, because I
truly want to keep it fan friendly and for all ages,
because we do have a lot of junior drags or
drivers or kids playing, and if there's a tequila sponsor involved,
I just don't know how that would resonate. I want
to just kind of keep it user friendly for everybody
(49:18):
and not have any give anyone any pause to not
want to play. And people have talked about, oh, hey,
you have all this data, you could start doing a
tiered system where you, yes, you could play for free,
but then you can maybe charge twenty five dollars to
get at it. And I was just like, I'm just
still trying to figure this out, Like I can't have
all these tiers and payments and follow you know that, son,
(49:41):
Right now, it's much easier for me to make it free,
take the financial hit, and figure out how to just
make it fun, make it better, make the user interface cool.
And you know, I looked at how the NCAA did
their brackets online now, so we were already talking that
I think our interface now is great for twenty twenty
(50:03):
five and possibly twenty twenty six, but by twenty twenty seven,
we'll probably who knows how the interface and cell phones
will be working, but will you know, have to do
some kind of Oh, just keep it fresh.
Speaker 1 (50:16):
Yeah, that's what it's all about, right. It has to
stay fresh, and it has to stay relevant, and it
has to stay intriguing enough to get people to keep
coming back, as we talked about. So all right, Ellen,
I appreciate this. I wanted to dig into all the
nerdy things of this, but I also wanted to bring
awareness to this because you know how much I love it.
I think it's so much fun. I think it's so
cool again to have a way to keep people intrigued
(50:38):
during a long season. NASCAR is going to have their
own in season tournament bracket thing this year, and Denny
Hamlin created one for fans last year. So I just
love a way for people to be engaged in what
they're watching. So hopefully we brought some awareness to this today.
But I also just get to be nosy about what
it's all about. So I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (50:58):
No problem anytime, killying. I definitely love to tell drag
racing stories anytime you want to talk about, you know,
the ins and outs. I appreciate all the coverage you give,
and so the easiest way, I mean, my last little
plug is you can sign up for free anytime. You
just go to drag racepracupanansa dot com and sign up
an ease, follow us on our social media. We have Instagram, Twitter,
(51:18):
and Facebook post all the time, and I just appreciate
you kind of a being a player and helping out
with debatea testing that I will tell you that will
always be one of my favorite texts was when we
were testing it in Brainerd and you sent me a
text on Sunday morning that was like, Hey, I'm sitting
here with Deb Williams and we're in I don't know
(51:42):
Martinsville or wherever you were in summertime, and we're filling
out our drag race brackup bananas and brackets, and I
really thought, this is exactly what I want to be happening,
is like people other places thinking about drag racing, and
that like was my first glimmer of hope that I
was onto something. Was you like, Hey, I think this
(52:05):
is really cool. I've told Deb Williams about it, and
now we're kind of doing it at a NASCAR race
and it's gotten you know, and it's just continued to
grow from there. So thank you very much for being
an early adopter on all this stuff.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
Yeah no, I got deb involved. I think I got
Jerry jord involved. So I'm competitive, but I'm also spreading
the word, which comes to me sometimes because there's more
people to beat me. But that's all right, it's all
it's all for the good of things. So Elan, I
appreciate it, and we will have you back again to
talk more about just drag racing and your stories, because
I know you got a ton of them, but I
appreciate the time today.
Speaker 2 (52:35):
Thank you, Kelly.
Speaker 1 (52:42):
All right, well time for you. Go sign up. Hopefully
you want to play if you're not already, or at
least go check it out and see what it's all about.
Because it's so easy to get into, it's so easy
to become addicted to. Whether you just like games and
fantasy or following racing, or you're a diehard drag racing fan,
this game.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
Is for you.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
We talked about it. I am highly competitive and I
love this. I am so excited to fill these brackets out,
but I get so upset when I don't win, but
I keep doing it every weekend every race, so hopefully
you will now want to sign up, And of course
I thank Elin for coming on the show, and I
do promise. I know I've said this quite a bit
with guests, but we're going to have Alan back to
talk just about his career on a public relations, media crisis, communication,
(53:25):
all of that, to talk about drag racing, because he
truly does have some great stories. Drag race Bracket bonanza
dot com. I know it's a mouthful, but you can
do it. Drag race Bracket bonanza dot com. You can
also follow them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. So
much information that they put out there. If you do
get into the game and you want to play, so
go check them out, give it a follow, and hopefully
(53:48):
you will sign up. If you enjoy the conversation, please
leave a rating and review. Can go to social media.
My handle is at Kelly Crandall on Twitter or x
if that's what you're calling it, Facebook, Instagram as well.
You can find me on LinkedIn. I'm very easy to
find and engage with Blue Sky as well. Trying to
be more active over there. So let me know what
(54:08):
you think, and thank you, of course for clicking and listening.
Each week and with that, that's all we have for
this week, so I appreciate you, as I said, clicking, listening, downloading.
We'll be back soon with a brand new episode of
the Racing Writers Podcast
Hey, everyone, Welcome to the Racing Writers Podcast. I'm your host,
Kelly crandall. Our guest today is Elin Warner, the creator
of Drag Race Bracket Bonanza. This is an absolutely amazing,
so much fun can fuel your competitive fire if you're
like me game for n h A drag racing. Drag
Race Bracket Bananza is exactly how it sounds. It's a
(00:27):
bracket style game because drag racing is all about brackets.
Follow the ladder on race day, who's going to advance,
who's making their way through the ladder. So with drag
Race Bracket Bananza, you sign up, you can play for free,
and what you do every Sunday morning or Saturday night
whenever you fill out your bracket is pick each winner
through the bracket. So you get to the finals, you
picked your winner, and so on and so on down
(00:49):
the line. Elan is the creator of this game, as
I said, and I love it so much and I
want to get other people involved in it because I
think it's been so fantastic for the sport of drag
racing that our conversation today is quite simply just digging
into how this game came about in all of the
behind the scenes and nerdy aspects of making it work.
So we have so much to learn from today. Hopefully
it's going to make you interested to sign up if
(01:11):
you're not already playing. So let's jump in and learn
all about it. Here is Elan Warner on the Racing
Writers Podcast. All right, so we're going to bring Ellen
into the conversation. And you know, first off top of
my head, very important question. When you look at your
(01:32):
name and you look at how it's spelled, how many
people want to call you like Elon Musk now okay?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
And I will tell you it is so funny. If
you remember the old Sports Center commercials that were like
in the nineties, there's a guy named Michael Jordan, and
it was like him doing all these things and like
the level of disappointment, like the flower delivery guy or
the Matre d restaurants when they saw Michael Jordan was
coming in and it was like this regular business guy.
I now get that in certain circumstances, they're like, oh,
(02:03):
you're not the Elon I was looking for, And I'm like, well,
first of all, it's Elon, not Elon, And second of all,
I'm very sorry you're disappointed that I'm not a bond villain,
all right.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Well, like I said, I just need to clear the
air on that because internally and in my head sometimes
it makes me laugh because I do the same thing
when I'm thinking about, oh, I need to send them
an email or send them a text, and I re
so often I'll catch myself and I'll do it because
it's just it's funny how it's pronounced differently than it
spells yes, and how it's looked. And now, of course
we all associate that with the other guy.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
So it's out there and it's funny that when I
was in high school, there's Elon College in high Point,
North Carolina, and they used to be the Fighting Christians,
like that was their mascot, so I could get shirts
that said Elon Fighting Christians, so it looked like Elon
Fighting Christians, and I thought that was the coolest thing ever.
Well then they changed to the Phoenix, and it's not
(02:56):
nearly as cool, but that was kind of like seeing
you know, Elin pop up as like a sporting event
or in headlines. But now it's really wild because it's
like everywhere my name is very it's just very funny.
So I am that other guy. Yeah, and I was
here first. He's younger than me, and I've thought about
(03:17):
just for funsies, just you know, throwing out on Twitter
or X or whatever, like, hey, I was here first,
But then I'm afraid I'll get like banned from Twitter
because he owns Twitter. That would be just like see.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
You know, yeah, don't play with fire, right.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
So that's a good little pr one to one is
you have to before you go to social media think
about how it's going to be received, and then I
usually just hit the leap.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
That's a whole sepherate conversation, my man, that's a whole podcast.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
We actually touched on that. So we've go back to
a previous podcast and that's been covered.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yes, go to uh gosh, well it's been so long
ago now. I'll think of it later, of course, after
after we do this. But yes, we did do a
podcast talking about I think it was John Forrest's accent
and PR and media.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Afterwards, crisis management, all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
That's right, So you were here first, though you're also
doing far more important work in my opinion, because we
need to talk about drag race. Bracket bonanza, of course,
my favorite thing, and I tweeted a couple weeks ago,
I think before the season started, and I truly believe it.
I have been just blown away Elan of how far
this has come in a short amount of time, because
(04:26):
you kind of brought me in as you were starting
it out, kind of beta testing it so to see
what it is today. That's why I want to have
this conversation because it is so much fun. It is
truly kind of sweeping the industry, it feels like, which
I want to get into that as well, but I
want to dig first into the backstory of just going
ahead and doing it, because I know you've discussed how
(04:47):
this is not a new idea in the drag racing world.
Somebody just had to do it, So what was finally
the kick in the pants to take that step and
do it.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
We launched it in tru twenty twenty three, so a
US national twenty twenty three is when it went public.
I would say I've been having conversations with people about
it since at least twenty twenty with guys that like
Red Moon Marketing with Brian Loans, and I spent two
hours talking about it one night. I talked to some
(05:17):
NHA people I've talked to drivers about it and it
was just like, yeah, we should do that, or somebody
did something kind of like that, and I don't know what.
Over the off season before twenty twenty three started, I
was just like, I got to quit talking about it
and I have to figure out how to do it.
And the real impetus for it was Aidan Lampkin, who
(05:39):
is the it brains behind it. Is a graduate of
Colorado School of the Mines and he is a computer genius.
His real job he works for a credit card company,
like in their fraud department. I mean, so he's like
legit brainiac. And we have a family contest circle where
(06:01):
we do March Madness together with the two families we
do in NFL. If you win March Madness, you get
to pick a random contest that we all have to
do between to bridge the gap. Highly competitive. There's a
traveling Trophy. We can get into that later. But he
actually built a bracket for like the Strongest Man contest
(06:25):
that we did, and so he kind of and I
was like, he kind of inadvertently showed me how to
we could make a bracket that could potentially be functional
for drag race Brack Bonanza. So I hired him in
the beginning of twenty twenty three and said, can you
make this idea a reality? And we started internally. He
(06:49):
made it, We got the website, all the back end stuff,
and then we started testing it. And you were really
one of the early people outside of a circle of
about that got to participate. And you know, we just started.
You know, it was very what it started at versus
what it is today. Like anything, it's light years difference.
(07:12):
You know. We just wanted it to work, and we
spend a lot of time trying to break it, like
you know, user interface, you know all that stuff. So
that's it was just finally, I just I'm a guy
that I'll think about something. My brain is just a
big mush pod of ideas, and I don't get them
out and do them or write them down. I can't
(07:33):
sleep a bit when you.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Talk about getting it to work. First off, it's very
simple in simple terms for users and for players, it's
very much if you follow drag racing right, you pick
the winner of each matchup and move on so forth
down the line. But behind the scene, this is where
my nerve comes out. How does it work? How does
the scoring work, who's keeping track of it? Because you
(07:56):
guys are very quick also and updating it almost in
real time. So give me the nerdy behind the scenes of.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
How does this mak You're okay, put your nerd seatbelt on,
because one of the unintended consequences of this is we
are now a massive data resource because we wanted to
make it user friendly for fans, so you need and
for people also for people that aren't fans. So if
you tell your buddy I want you to play, they
(08:23):
need to kind of have some context pictures, some stats.
Not overwhelming, but just like why would I pick John
Force overrun caps? Well, you know, is Angie Smith really
that much better than Gaye Herrera. So we started in
twenty twenty three moving forward with putting every you know,
all the qualifiers in with their ATM mile prowor so
(08:44):
that data all gets stored by race by qualifying and
then we go into race day and then on a
race day on the back end we put in manually
we type in a lapse time mild prower reaction time,
and then what happened if Red lit cross the center
line their car wouldn't start, And then we note the
(09:04):
winner of the race. That stuff all gets cashaped, so
mean we go round by around. So you're storing all
this historical data. So as we're going forward in twenty
twenty three, we are gathering all that data and storing it.
But at the same time, I was going backwards and
adding the data for the previous races for twenty twenty three,
(09:29):
so you could look at someone's record before the US
National started. And then we're like, well, go back to
twenty twenty three, let's go back to twenty twenty two.
Let's go back to twenty twenty one. So we have
the run data going back almost fifteen years, and then
we can compile that and show it. That's how you
(09:51):
have all the route like on the truck, their cards,
on their statu sheet has all that data. The cool
thing is we can and this is where our kind
of alignment with nhr plaan HRA comes into effect. Is
that when you're filling out your bracket, you're essentially publicly
(10:12):
saying this is my confidence level in this person. We
can see in a real time arc how the confidence
is going from like Saturday when the brackets open, until
Sunday morning. So as soon as we lock the brackets.
On Sunday morning, we run a report and I don't
know if you've seen the pigraphs we do that show
(10:32):
who the fans think will win. So we have that
data in real time, which we're now figuring out how
to utilize that data for plane hrra that if you're
a person and living in a place that's legal to gamble,
(10:54):
you know on that deal. I would like to know
if thousands of people are filling out their brackets and
then fifty five percent of them think Ron Caps is
going to beat paul Lee, even though Pauline might be
the number seven qualifyer and Caps as the number ten qualifier,
why do they what? Do they know something? Do they
(11:15):
not know something? So on the data side, we're creating
and we're on the back end, So I spend ninety
percent of my time making drag Race back of Bonanza
is so cool for the user, for the player, for
fun for kids. But then there's ten percent where I'm
trying to really figure out what do I have? How
(11:35):
could it also be utilized in this information world playing
hr just fan nerd stuff like we can now we've
partnered with drag Race Reference on the stats for the
back end, so we'll be able to add in head
to head matchups, so you'll be able to see Ron
Capps's record versus Buddyhole or you know, Antron versus Steve
(11:59):
before you make your picks. Also not as a career number,
as a race number, you know. So it's it is
so cool. And the way it works is I literally
am at a computer at the race and I'm watching
the race, and I just sit there and type in
(12:21):
round by round and then as soon as the round
is over, I hit submit and it gets uploaded to
the site and it's added so realistically, and we could
submit race by race like but that just you know,
it's just easier to just do it them all together,
manually double check them and then upload them so that
(12:42):
after E one of Top Fuel you see the results
and usually it's about a five minutes, so we try
to keep it going. N h R A or drag
racing in general, is a wonky sport. We get it
affected by a lot of outside issues. We're relying on
the n h R eight. You provide us the qualifying order,
(13:03):
race results, things like that, and sometimes, like anybody, they
make mistakes and the first year twenty twenty three in Vegas,
Bob Task and Bob Height qualified one to two. Taska
one Height two qualifying order goes out. We put it
on our site. People start filling out brackets, and then
(13:25):
thirty minutes later in Ha' is like, oh, Taska had
a problem. He's actually the number two qualifier. So I'm
at a restaurant in Vegas on the phone of my
IT guy in Colorado. Okay, we closed the brackets. Four
hundred people had filled out brackets already, so we closed
the brackets and then went to work on changing it.
(13:46):
And then how do we handle those four hundred people
getting their brackets correct? And we were able to most
of them. It really didn't affect it too bad. But
then we reached out to the one hundred or so
and we're like, hey, this happened. We're going to open
the brackets up and you need to go in and
change your bracket. And we kind of worked their way
through it. And that's probably the thing I'm most proud
(14:06):
of is the team that I have working. Abby's on
my team, Aiden Peyton's our graphic design person. Is how
responsive we are on social media that if you are emails,
you email us a technical question, like I've walked players
through filling out a bracket this year on the phone,
(14:27):
like they just say, I'm having a problem. Log again,
I'm having this, and we it's like, we understand you're
immediately trying to do it and it's important to you
and we want to make sure you can play. So
we handle every case and it gets less and less.
User faces getting better, people are getting more accustomed to it.
But I don't know how much longer we'll be to
(14:48):
do that because we've now at the end of the
first year, we had just over fifteen hundred people sign
up to play in seven races. At the end of
last year we were almost to four thousand, and we're
now over four thousand signed up players and that they
(15:09):
are not all playing every weekend. We learned a lot
about going for twenty races last year. It's a little
bit more like fantasy football versus March madness. You can
get twenty five million people to fill out of bracket
one time. Getting people to fell out twenty of them
is closer to fantasy football. But we have three We
have three hundred and fifty leagues in Braca Bonanza. Whether
(15:32):
there are four people leagues or are up to one
hundred and twenty people, you know, So that mindset of
getting people to play, making it easy for him is
a huge, huge part of what we're trying to do
and to make it fun and get people engaged in
the sport.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Yeah, all right, there's a couple of things in there
that you started to hit on that I want to
ask specifically about. But first off, the graphics you mentioned
specifically with social media have been tremendous because you were
talking about really, you guys, have become not just a game,
but kind of information overload maybe for people who want
it right. So there's grafts and pie charts and stats
(16:09):
and all of that. But on the flip side of that,
what were some of the important aspects of building this
elan that you wanted to incorporate for the more casual,
not die hard race fan.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
The number one thing was photos. I got my ass
kicked a couple of years ago in the NFL playoff
game that ESPN did when you could like pick like
which quarterback was going to throw for the most touchdowns
in a game or what running back was going to
run for the most yards by a high school sophomore,
Peyton who's actually my graphics person now literally picked and
(16:45):
that was when the Bengals were going on their tear
picked Joe Burrow because he had good hair and agree smile.
She didn't know anything. She's picking running backs because she
thought there the way they wore their U uniform, they
look good in their uniform and how it matched their
I mean it was like the most insane, but so
(17:07):
she I had to have pictures. You had to have
something where if someone wanted to pick I want to
pick all women racers. I want to pick African you know,
I'm an African American guy. I want to you know,
I want to support you know, Antron or you know,
Richard Gadson spand you know, I wanted to make that
a touch point. And then the data about where they're
(17:28):
from and do they drive like a Chevy or a
Toyota or a fork because they're passionate about supporting their brands.
So those were the real touch points and just enough
stance so you could just kind of know who was
had had success and then who was a long shot
because some people just like to do, you know, take
(17:50):
the underdog. So those were the biggest touch points where
photos and you know making it where they always I
was a manic about on the bracket when it's public,
when it's published, that there's no ghost heads, that we
have a photo for everybody you qualify for an A
(18:11):
nature a race, you're gonna have your photo there, whether
it's your first race or your five hundred race. And
I go around to the pits on for like we
now scan the entry list, make sure everyone has their photo.
We have a driver database and like Steve Christman race
this weekend in Arizona, so I went to Chris's pitt,
(18:32):
introduced myself, explain what barka Bonanza was, and it's like,
can I get your head shot? So I have your
headshot in there. I did the same thing for John
Capps and Funny Car, and it's it's a slipper dew
because it also gives me a chance to talk to racers,
which I love to do. But in Funny Car there
were twenty guys and caps. When I went and talked
to him, he wasn't qualified yet, but I was like, hey,
(18:54):
I'm going to take your picture so that when you qualify,
you'll be in the bracket with a head shot, you know.
So that's that's the biggest is I think the photos
make a big difference and just having a little bit
of date about where they're from.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Yeah, I completely agree with that. I think you know.
As a side note over here in NASCAR, one of
the reasons that I've tweeted that I like what the
CW is doing with their coverage as they've come in
this year with the Xfinity series is their graphics include
what the driver's car looks like and what the driver's
headshot is. Because again to your point, the fans need
to know who they're rooting for. So if they see
(19:31):
them in the garage or you know, at the grocery
store or whatever, they know who those people are. Yes,
you need to recognize them. You also touched on because
I was going to ask how many people are playing
now here we are in it so, because to reiterate,
it started the final couple white races in twenty twenty three.
Twenty twenty four was the first full year. Here we
(19:52):
are now in twenty twenty five. So you said over
four thousand. You were touching on their retention rate, and
I wanted to ask about that too, because it is
something you made a good comparison with, like fantasy football.
There's going to be people who like me, are very
competitive and die hard, and I'm gonna set that thing
every week. But I'm curious about what the trends you
all have seen of how many people are doing that,
(20:15):
who comes in maybe plays it one week every couple weeks,
or what are the trends there we are.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
That's our goal for twenty twenty five is to figure
out you know, the biggest thing was when you first
started the first seven races of twenty twenty three was
reminding people how to play, to just play. It was new,
and you get busy on Saturday night after race or
Sunday morning, you forget about it. We have time zone issues.
One of the races the first year was Ready that
(20:43):
had a nine to thirty East Coast start, and at
that point, basically forty five percent of our players are
from West of the Rockies, so a nine thirty start
was a six thirty lock time. Like basically if you
didn't have your brackets filled out by six thirty in
the morning and fill them out, and a lot of
people woke up and try to fill out their brackets
(21:04):
and they were locked because the race had already started.
So we have to factor that in, so our arc
is just reminding people at the Gator Nationals this year,
we did a lot of hey, the race is starting
at ten thirty in the morning. If you're on the
West Coast, fill out your bracket on Saturday night. It's
(21:24):
a lot of communication. We now can do text updates
to just remind folks. If you opt in, you get
a text reminder of hey, brackets are closing in two hours.
We try not to bomb people with that stuff because
they got a lot going on and it's Sunday and
they could be church or Saturday night. When we're trying
to communicate with people. We're now reaching out, setting up
(21:46):
some functionality of hey, you haven't played in three races,
you know, want to just remind you, Hey, you know,
this is how you can be notified, and trying to
get some survey feedback on why they're not Is it
just simply they're not having fun, or they have different interests,
or they were only at a race in Gainesville and
(22:07):
we found this out that a lot of people will
sign up at the race. We do a lot of
on site gorilla marketing, Like I literally went abby came
up with a good idea. We used to. I have
little handouts with QR codes and little stickers we give out,
and I would when people are in line for autographs,
ad mission, foods or skag or wherever, I would walk
(22:27):
the line and just chat them up about drag Exprack
Bananasa and hey, this is game is out there if
you want to play for free, here's a cure code.
While you're waiting in line, and then we do that.
We do when they're doing the track walk for NHRA.
You got a whole massive people. When they're coming back
from the track walk, I would give them the information.
I didn't want to give it out when they started,
(22:48):
because last thing I wanted is a bunch of drag
Exprack and Bananaza flyers on the track and then I
get yelled at by the track crew guys. So I
waited until they came back and that we saw some
tracks on that a Gator Nationals. Abby just was like,
I'm just gonna go up in the grand stands on
Sunday morning. These people are just sitting in the stands
at nine o'clock waiting for an eleven o'clock start or
(23:10):
whatever with their phones out, and so we did that
and she was really successful. Now, she did get some
fan feedback about just general Nhara stuff because people thought
she worked for the nh Ura and she was like,
I'm not really that person. But there were people beside
her that saw her getting not really ramed, but like
getting some pointed criticism that were like basically took pity
(23:33):
on and we're like, hey, I really feel bad for
give me that flyer because I'll sign up right now.
And so I went through the grand stands in Arizona
this weekend for like forty five minutes and basically just
walk the grand stands, chatting people up if they're out
on their phone. I was like, hey, here's this game.
It's free. Anyone any age can play. You just scan
the QR code or go to drag raspractupananza dot com.
(23:56):
And we had almost one hundred people sign up before
or the race. What we found is you have to
remind them that they can play every week. A lot
of people just thought it was events specific, so they
were educating them on just because you signed up at
Seattle doesn't mean you have to wait until Seattle to
(24:17):
play again. You can play every weekend. But some our
fans sometimes think of and this is where it gets
into the bigger universe of NHA of someone comes to
the Winternationals because it's local and they've always gone to
the Winternationals, but they don't really watch it on TV
(24:40):
or they don't really follow it because it's like a
singular event in their life. I go to the Winternationals.
That's what my family does, and I really love it,
and caps is great and Antroine's great, but then they
don't really truly follow it like on. So now we're
working on how do we get them to understand Yeah,
in person, you see it and it's truly awesome. Here's
(25:01):
how you stay in contact with it for the rest
of the year. So we trying to do short contests.
The four Wide Cup is coming up, which is a
contest for just if you get the most points for
the two four wide races, we do a trophy. Even
though there's going to be three four wide races this year,
we're still keeping the two Wide Cup as a standalone,
the two race four Wide Cup as a standalone, and
(25:24):
then the Charlotte two will be in the countdown.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
The text messages you mentioned. Social media has has grown exponentially.
I think you also do. There's some email pushes, right,
There's some newsletters or stats that go out there. There's
also been sponsors that have been brought on board, which
goes back to my original point of just how much
this has grown from the outside looking in from the
(25:48):
inside though, Elan is has this grown the way that
it needs to or you hoped that it would find
I mean, con considering again, you only started a year,
not even a year and a half, I wouldn't say ago, yeah, yes,
and no it.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
I tell my wife this is an investment. This is
completely being funded by Werner Games Entertainment, which is a
separate company from my PR company. And I tell people
an interta that They're like, what's going on with braacka Bananza?
And I was like, I'll tell you I could have
a kick ass super cop car and a totor home
for what I'm currently investing in drag Race Brack of Bananza.
(26:30):
And people in the know know that that is that's
a close to a six figure investment, and it is
truly a passion project for me. I'm you know, I
don't want to say I'm seeing light at the end
of the tunnel, but we've been super Summit jumped on
board very early. Jim Greenleaf was a player, saw the
opportunity started giving us some gift certificates which we gave
(26:53):
to winners. They saw a great response from that, and
then they are the sponsor for the plaques this year.
So I'm big on and we can get in is prizes.
I think we give what some of the most awesome
prizes for a free game out there any sport. I
challenge any other sport to say, hey, this is what
you get for a free game. Peak stepped up and
(27:17):
this year they're sponsoring our Monday Peak Peak position recap.
And that was something that actually came from a conversation
with the player that played for the first time, and
they got the Friday Denz Deats tip sheet, they got
the Saturday hey the brackets are open reminder or email,
(27:37):
they got the Sunday Morning quick reminder email, and they played.
But then they got to like Tuesday, and like, I
wonder how I did. I don't really remember, you know,
I wasn't really It's busy working and I'm going on
the next risk and they're like, if you had a
Monday email that just kind of put a bow on
everything it would kind of close the loop. So we
(27:58):
did that and that that probably the last six races
of last season, and that became our second most open email. Obviously,
the Saturday night brackets are open Email was the number one.
It's got about a sixty five percent open rate. The
Monday one is close to fifty percent, and it kind
of spikes and stuff. So Peak totally grabbed onto that
(28:22):
with their all their peak performance and they're doing a
sign to win contests and they're also very socially active,
so that's been huge. They have their own league for
their Peak Squad and that's taken off. We started a
track challenge to again just get more tracks involved and
rhode X Coffee stepped up to kind of take that on.
(28:45):
So we still are finding sponsors for individual races. Bernie
sponsored the Gator Nationals because they just wanted to own
everything related to the Gator Nationals. We've had, you know,
Laris Mercer's I did a deal with Matt Hagen last
year with Take Cattle Company, and that was that was
more of a trade deal because Hagen's been so great
(29:06):
supporting Brack of Binanza and retweeting and doing all my
crazy requests for stuff, and I wanted to help his
cattle company, so we gave away. They actually had a
product category that was like the Junior Bonanza, which was
like one hundred pounds of ground b or something, so
we they gave us some of that and then we
(29:26):
promoted it as a prize for the event winners. So
that that has been super satisfying also, and the sponsor
involvement and they're seeing the benefit of it, which is
really cool, and that that I'm hopeful that that will
grow as we move forward and can show our players
(29:50):
are reactive, they are supporting our sponsors, they're knowledgeable in
h RA fans, and you know, as we get more
of them than it kind of becomes, you know, more
impactful marketing.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
I wanted to go next to the prizes that you
were talking about because it seems like there's always new
ones coming out. So this is a part of the
conversation whereas we keep talking about this and hopefully we're
getting people interested as they listen, it's like, Okay, well
what do I get out of playing?
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Right?
Speaker 1 (30:13):
That's always the big thing. So you said there's plaques,
those are race Pacific. There's there's been belts that have
been introduced. There's a helmet that was introduced. I think,
as you said, there's more coming up. So let's dig
into all right, we've got people to sign up, Well,
what are they going to get?
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Yeah, so the number one thing we do is the plaques,
and that you're talking about, did I expect it to
get to this point? Every race there's an overall winner
based on who gets the most points, and then there's
a top field winner who gets the most points just
in top fuel, funny car, pro stock and prostoc motorcycle.
(30:50):
For a traditional race. There's five plaques for every national
event that we have a little corner of the pressure
room set up and the dry divers will come in,
they'll do all their post race stuff and then they
we get them to sign the plaques. The thing that's
amazing now is it has become for the drivers part
of the post race experience. They know, they do the
(31:15):
stage stuff on the track, they do Winter Circle, they
come in the pressure to talk to the media and
now they signed the driver's back bonanza plax like that's
part of and Abby was in there at the Gator
Nationals when Dallas Glenn was doing his media stuff with
the backdrop and talking to all the media, and Gabe
Herrera came in and saw Dallas was still going and
(31:37):
then immediately she goes. I could tell he was looking
around to see where the brack of Bonanza plax were,
Like he knew that was part of the process and
we get them. This past weekend for Arizona Nationals was
probably one of our better plaque weekends because I try
to get the drivers to personalize them beyond just signing them.
So Sean Langdon signed the top fuel play back to
(32:01):
back Sean Laney because he'd won two years in a row.
Paulie won his first funny Car race, so he signed it.
First funny Car race, Paulie first funny car went Paulie.
And then Greg Anderson had this crazy deal where his
car stalled and really you know, and this whole crazy deal,
(32:24):
so I had him sign the plaque. My craziest win ever,
Greg Anderson. You know, when Doug Coletta won his fiftieth race,
he signed it. Fiftieth win. When Gage Herrera was on
the tear of all the races, he literally was chronicling
them on plaques. Ninth in a row, tenth in a row,
eleventh in a row, and I think I don't remember
(32:46):
if I got Chase van Zant. It was Chase fan
Zant's first pro pro like bike win ever, and I
was really kind of pushing him to like write like
Gaye Terrera Street Killer kind of deal.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Yeah, broke the streak.
Speaker 2 (32:58):
Broke the streak. So the plaques are the most race
to race universal thing. Then we do get drivers to
sign brack oft Bananza hats, and we do social media
promotions with those. You know, if you share stuff, you know,
we have decals we send out, well, we'll do surveys
(33:18):
and we do random things like that. We actually have
certificates for some races. When we did the Legends deal
with the US Nationals, we had Larry Dixon do a bracket,
Warren Johnson, Ace McCullough and Angel if your bracket was
better than theirs, we selected ten people randomly and they
got like certificates of achievement. They're like, hey, congratulations, you
(33:40):
picked a bracket better than this legend. And then to
get people to play more on a shorter commitment, like
we have the two race series for the four White Cup,
we do trophies for that. We do the Majors, which
I have in contention that we should have four majors,
but the three we have right now are the Gator Nationals,
(34:03):
the Winter Nationals, and the US Nationals. So Katie Buttera,
who's Apple Art Girls as an artist out of Indy,
does really amazing. Souff made a major's trophy for US
last year that had like three flags on it and
they had Winternationals highlights graphically in US now it is
really super cool, like so cool that I was like,
(34:23):
dang and I should have had her just make one
extra just for me, which she liked them so much,
she made one for herself and I was like, dang it,
I should have said, just charge me for another one.
So we do that for the majors, and then we
do championship belts for the countdown so you can play.
If you come in the middle of the season, you
(34:44):
may not have a chance to win the overall, but
there's still opportunities to win stuff. You know. We did
champ belts last year that we got the World champions
to sign at Pomona. And then the big thing is
the helmet. Impact gave us a helmet last year and
we had every drive ever that made the countdown signed
the helmet, and then we had the World champs signed
(35:07):
the visor and that was the overall winner. The guy
that had played all season got that. And again, this
is a game that's free that anyone can play, and
we've mailed prizes. We can get into this too about
where people are playing, but that's the whole price. My
deal is, I want to have the coolest prizes. I
want to get people something that would not necessarily get
(35:29):
you don't have to be present to when we mail
them to you, you know, So that's just a huge
deal for me. I want people to be like, I'm
playing this for free, and if I'm not successful this weekend,
I'm going to try again next week because man, I
want to get a really cool plaque that's personal and
it's signed and all that stuff, and just as a.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Sign not too. There's also merch. I recently discovered that
people can go buy hats or shirts or whatever.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
It may be.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
All right, so you said it there. That is an
interesting thing when you're talking about kind of the data
and getting people involved. And we were talking about earlier
about retention rate and having people sign up, So dig
into that a little more of where you can see
where people are playing from. Because the cool thing about
drag racing is I mean, listen, there's motorsports all over
the world, but drag racing. Yes, NHRA is well known
(36:20):
in the United States, but there's also what the FIA, Yeah, Australia.
It's not like this is an unknown commodity. So are
you seeing it to where people all over the world
are signing up?
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Yes, and we have racers that are representing other countries.
Ida z Edderstrom, the Quadras, you know, so we have
We've had We've shipped plaques for winners all to forty
three states. We've shipped them to six different countries. We
consistently sent prizes to Canada, you know, so we sent
(36:56):
prizes to Canada, have sent prizes to the UK, have
sent prizes to Germany, have sent prizes to Australia. We
had a winner in the Philippines that thank goodness. I
sent him an email and he's like, I live in
the Philippines, but I'm coming back to the US for
a trip to see my brother in about a month.
(37:16):
He lives in Las Vegas. Just mail my plack to
Las Vegas. So it was a difference in fifteen dollars
in shipping versus seventy five dollars in shipping.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
But but, and I don't mean interrupt you, but the
hook here for people is that so many times with
games or gambling or whatever meat, whatever it may be,
you know, the fine print is, oh, you have to
be a legal resident or oh it's not open to
this country or this state. You guys are open to everybody.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Yeah, because our prizes are less than five hundred dollars,
there's no quid pro quo. It's you know, we're not
offering you know, it's basically you're just kind of coming
to the site for free playing, and then you know
you're opting into emails standard stuff. But we're hyper sensitive
(38:08):
to not sharing that data, you know, bombing people tons
of emails. But yeah, we have and we can see
like get super nerd. We use AWS on our back end,
which is Amazon works just whatever. But you can watch
like there's a map of the world and when we
open the brackets, you can see little dots literally filling
(38:30):
out brackets and you can just watch it go across
time zones on the country and we can just see
people other people playing here. You know, and so that's
one of the graphics we're going to show is here's
where people have played so far in twenty twenty five,
and it is truly people are playing around the world,
and that to me is also as the guy that
(38:52):
got this started, makes my head just right. That just
the fact that it's a thing and that people are
playing and that people you know, have Now I've always
been a behind the scenes guy on the pr side.
My job is to promote other people. But now I
have this thing where I'm the public face of So
(39:13):
when people will come up to me at a race
and engage me in conversation about Break of Bananza or
refer to me as the Break of Bananza guy, or
to my daughter's mortification on an autograph or a picture
with me, it's like, it's really cool, but it's also
kind of surreal. But that people are I mean, I've
(39:35):
had a mom come up to me in reading last
year it was like, I love Brack of Bonanza so
much because I play with my son and that's like
our connection, you know, and guys are playing with their
dads and they're not in the same place, but Brack
of Bonanza is kind of connecting them race to race,
which is really cool.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
I want to have you back on in the future
elin to talk more about who you are and what
you do, because I love the communication side, and I'm
sure you have stories for days of people that you've
worked with, and I love digging into, just again the
media side and how you know folks like you try
to elevate drivers and so on and so forth. But
I want to save that for a future show. So
a couple more things before we wrap up here is
(40:19):
as this has gone on now the last couple of years,
the drivers are in on it. As you said, it
gets mentioned on broadcasts, it's talked, it's widely talked about
when you're at the racetrack. What was that work like
to get people in the industry to buy into something
like this?
Speaker 2 (40:36):
It was for the four people that follow me on Instagram.
You'll you will get in my stories, which I'm terrible at.
I motivate myself with. I got was lucky enough to
meet Kobe Bryant many years ago and have the conversation
about black bomba and how he pushed himself as a
basketball player to get better, and that just stuck with me.
(40:58):
So if you following my story. All you're getting is
David Goggins, shocko. All these guys their motivation of you
know how you just have to run into a wall
and get knocked down and get back up. Because when
I started, the NHA was very understandably wary of it.
(41:21):
They just didn't know what it was. They were in
the process of putting play in h RA together and
I just came out gang busters like I was just like,
if I'm going to do it, I'm going to just
give out flyers and I'm going to put QR codes everywhere.
And it was just like a full on gorilla marketing.
I'm getting drivers to do stuff I'm trying. I'm putting
logos on race cars. And the pushback was, you know,
(41:44):
so I write PA announcements for some of my teams
and I give them an announcer. So of course there
are teams are like, we'll support Dragger's back Bonanza. So
I'm writing, like, right, and Bonanza is part of one
of their sponsors, and they're like, well, the logo is
not really big enough on the car to warren a PA.
So that kind of opened can of works. There were
(42:04):
sponsors in the manufacturer's midway that were loving the game
that were like, hey, we have stand ups in our
pit area. If you make a sign with the QR code,
we'll put that in our pit area when we don't
have autograph signs. I was like, that's gretigo, but you
probably need to clear that with NHAA because I work
on a track operator side as well with a motorplex,
so I knew there's some rules. And so then sponsors
(42:26):
were finding out that they didn't have passed through rights
in their own display, and then that became a thing,
and I'm trying to get it mentioned on the Fox
broadcast and they're sensitive to gambling, and that became a thing.
So it was constantly me and there's so many great
people in h A that were supportive that were just like, hey,
we're just trying to we want this to be successful,
(42:48):
but we've got to figure it out. We can't get
ahead of ourselves out of our ski So it was
me constantly trying things, getting my hand slapped, and then
going okay, how can we work around this? And they
were now it is much We have a much better
relationship with Play Natura, but it's still trying to figure
out how we mesh the two because drag race brack
(43:10):
of Bananza is a gateway drug to play nature a
All fantasy is, you know, all fantasy is a at
some level a mechanism to get you to start taking
a chance on winning money. If you think you're really
good at fantasy, Let's see if I can put my
money where I'm about this and guys will have you know,
(43:31):
and and that's fine. If you have, you know, you
have the means you're of age, it's legal in your state.
That's great. But brack of Bonanza to me, is just
a great marketing tool that is still being developed and
figured out to how you know, how it can all
work and maximize and promote the sport and promote the
drivers and all that stuff. But the driver's getting involved
(43:54):
has been great in the Nature app. It was so funny.
I did some marketing with the HR last year and
we can have a continuing marketing relationship. But I did
an email blast and I paid to have a certain
number of email sent and I got an email back
or from one of the ntry marketing guys. It's like, hey,
we have a problem with the headline in your email.
(44:17):
And I'm like, okay, what is, He goes, well, it
has to say NHA Marketing partner, and then your subject
line is that okay. And at this point, this was
like twenty twenty three where I'd been like doing and
I was like, yeah, you want to send an email
out to like thousands of people that says I'm an
NHRY marketing partner. Hell yeah, do that. So then they
(44:42):
send it out and then I had a screenshot of that,
and then I blasted that out to everybody that hey,
re legit, we're an entry marketing partner now, and that
you know, that became a thing, you know, because but
so it's constantly push and getting knocked down and having
(45:02):
things fail and just figuring out, how do we make
it better? This didn't work, how do we make it
bit which, you know.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Like anything, it's just constantly pushing and showing people that
it's you know, this is good for you, it's good
for me, this is it's harmless. And for those who
don't know, just quick note the play NHA is the
official gambling side of nhr A. Now that is that
has been introduced. So that's why you know, people hear
a lot about that too. But drag race Breck at Bonanza.
(45:33):
There's no money involved, as you said, it's free to
sign up, and you're just you're trying to win prizes.
So all right, one last thing, because again we're going
to have a whole separate conversation in the future about
more stuff. But you made a comment earlier, Elan about
how your mind is always going and kind of just
how this came to be. So I take that to
mean that your mind is going to continue to go
(45:53):
of what's next, what do we keep doing with it?
How do we make it bigger? Right, I'm assuming that's
the next part.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
The next part is incorporating you know, to me, I'm
a huge football fan, but you know, Fox does a
good job of you know, on the on again on
the fantasy wagering side where you can win Terry Bradshaw's
one hundred thousand dollars I'm now looking at and we
had great success with the Legends for the US Nationals.
(46:22):
Is how do we with our marketing partners, like with Peek,
We're going to probably hopefully have like Alex Martin fill
out of bracket. She's there, Dragon Drive person, have her
fill out of bracket and then you can pick against
Alex Martin. I would love to have Kletus McFarland do
a bracket. I would love to have David Freiberger do
(46:43):
a bracket. Freg Burger, if you're listening, I'm straight up
slow rolling you on this. I have not asked for anything,
but like I was fortunate to do n HRA a
TV with Loans and Freiburger. Just they called me and
they're like, hey, do you want to talk about brack
of Bonanza while we're you know, in some downtime. And
(47:04):
it took all Kelly, you know me, it took all
my energy. I'm standing between Loans, who is one of
my all time favorite people in the sport, and I
have not had much interaction with David Freiberger, but he's
so awesome on roadkill, on all the things he does
that I just literally just wanted to grab him by
the shoulders and say, will you just please tweet something
(47:26):
about drag race brackup Bananza to your seven hundred thousand followers,
Just if you would just possibly say we were cool,
that would be so awesome. But I did it. I
just totally played it cool. It's like, Okay, this is great.
So those are the things where there's a you know,
I read all of Malcolm Gladwell's stuff. I'm like, what
exactly is the tipping point for brack of Bonanza. I
(47:48):
think we're getting closer Summit and Peak and Rhodex Coffee
coming on board is a little bit of it. You know,
that's a tipping point to see the sponsorship side of it,
more players coming in, the driver supporting it, NHRAE becoming
realizing oh this does benefit us both and I am
(48:12):
you know, and I think a lot of people are like, how,
you know, are you making money at this? I am not.
I'm not making money. My goal is to if I
can get it to a break even level, braackup Binanza
will go on forever. And you know, it's creeping that way.
I'm seeing, you know, like progress and things are coming together,
(48:33):
but it's still got a long long ways to go.
But it's fun. I mean, I just love the challenge
of it. I love the satisfaction of people playing and
not going what will I will always. I've had some
people approach me with you know, we have nine million
tequila companies involved in NHRAE. We've had some interest from
Tequilla Company. It's like, hey, how could we be involved,
(48:55):
And I have said I don't really know, because I
truly want to keep it fan friendly and for all ages,
because we do have a lot of junior drags or
drivers or kids playing, and if there's a tequila sponsor involved,
I just don't know how that would resonate. I want
to just kind of keep it user friendly for everybody
(49:18):
and not have any give anyone any pause to not
want to play. And people have talked about, oh, hey,
you have all this data, you could start doing a
tiered system where you, yes, you could play for free,
but then you can maybe charge twenty five dollars to
get at it. And I was just like, I'm just
still trying to figure this out, Like I can't have
all these tiers and payments and follow you know that, son,
(49:41):
Right now, it's much easier for me to make it free,
take the financial hit, and figure out how to just
make it fun, make it better, make the user interface cool.
And you know, I looked at how the NCAA did
their brackets online now, so we were already talking that
I think our interface now is great for twenty twenty
(50:03):
five and possibly twenty twenty six, but by twenty twenty seven,
we'll probably who knows how the interface and cell phones
will be working, but will you know, have to do
some kind of Oh, just keep it fresh.
Speaker 1 (50:16):
Yeah, that's what it's all about, right. It has to
stay fresh, and it has to stay relevant, and it
has to stay intriguing enough to get people to keep
coming back, as we talked about. So all right, Ellen,
I appreciate this. I wanted to dig into all the
nerdy things of this, but I also wanted to bring
awareness to this because you know how much I love it.
I think it's so much fun. I think it's so
cool again to have a way to keep people intrigued
(50:38):
during a long season. NASCAR is going to have their
own in season tournament bracket thing this year, and Denny
Hamlin created one for fans last year. So I just
love a way for people to be engaged in what
they're watching. So hopefully we brought some awareness to this today.
But I also just get to be nosy about what
it's all about. So I appreciate that.
Speaker 2 (50:58):
No problem anytime, killying. I definitely love to tell drag
racing stories anytime you want to talk about, you know,
the ins and outs. I appreciate all the coverage you give,
and so the easiest way, I mean, my last little
plug is you can sign up for free anytime. You
just go to drag racepracupanansa dot com and sign up
an ease, follow us on our social media. We have Instagram, Twitter,
(51:18):
and Facebook post all the time, and I just appreciate
you kind of a being a player and helping out
with debatea testing that I will tell you that will
always be one of my favorite texts was when we
were testing it in Brainerd and you sent me a
text on Sunday morning that was like, Hey, I'm sitting
here with Deb Williams and we're in I don't know
(51:42):
Martinsville or wherever you were in summertime, and we're filling
out our drag race brackup bananas and brackets, and I
really thought, this is exactly what I want to be happening,
is like people other places thinking about drag racing, and
that like was my first glimmer of hope that I
was onto something. Was you like, Hey, I think this
(52:05):
is really cool. I've told Deb Williams about it, and
now we're kind of doing it at a NASCAR race
and it's gotten you know, and it's just continued to
grow from there. So thank you very much for being
an early adopter on all this stuff.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
Yeah no, I got deb involved. I think I got
Jerry jord involved. So I'm competitive, but I'm also spreading
the word, which comes to me sometimes because there's more
people to beat me. But that's all right, it's all
it's all for the good of things. So Elan, I
appreciate it, and we will have you back again to
talk more about just drag racing and your stories, because
I know you got a ton of them, but I
appreciate the time today.
Speaker 2 (52:35):
Thank you, Kelly.
Speaker 1 (52:42):
All right, well time for you. Go sign up. Hopefully
you want to play if you're not already, or at
least go check it out and see what it's all about.
Because it's so easy to get into, it's so easy
to become addicted to. Whether you just like games and
fantasy or following racing, or you're a diehard drag racing fan,
this game.
Speaker 2 (53:00):
Is for you.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
We talked about it. I am highly competitive and I
love this. I am so excited to fill these brackets out,
but I get so upset when I don't win, but
I keep doing it every weekend every race, so hopefully
you will now want to sign up, And of course
I thank Elin for coming on the show, and I
do promise. I know I've said this quite a bit
with guests, but we're going to have Alan back to
talk just about his career on a public relations, media crisis, communication,
(53:25):
all of that, to talk about drag racing, because he
truly does have some great stories. Drag race Bracket bonanza
dot com. I know it's a mouthful, but you can
do it. Drag race Bracket bonanza dot com. You can
also follow them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. So
much information that they put out there. If you do
get into the game and you want to play, so
go check them out, give it a follow, and hopefully
(53:48):
you will sign up. If you enjoy the conversation, please
leave a rating and review. Can go to social media.
My handle is at Kelly Crandall on Twitter or x
if that's what you're calling it, Facebook, Instagram as well.
You can find me on LinkedIn. I'm very easy to
find and engage with Blue Sky as well. Trying to
be more active over there. So let me know what
(54:08):
you think, and thank you, of course for clicking and listening.
Each week and with that, that's all we have for
this week, so I appreciate you, as I said, clicking, listening, downloading.
We'll be back soon with a brand new episode of
the Racing Writers Podcast
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