Major League Baseball Fails Fans in First Ever Speedway Classic

MLB did its job on Saturday. It made money. That’s its very plain goal with anything it does. The Speedway Classic will go down as one of the great missed opportunities in American professional sports, but MLB made its money. 

There will be social media posts, there will be bits on TV broadcasts, and maybe even some articles written about how over 90,000 people attended a baseball game. That’s where they started with this plan and that’s where they never really advanced from. 

“How many people can we get at a baseball game?”

It’s a fun thought and MLB did its darnedest  to answer that. The problem is they thought nothing of the experience for any one of those 90,000+ fans who made the trip. This was an overwhelming logistical nightmare and there’s no better example of that than the concessions. 

Bristol Motor Speedway allows you to bring in your own food and drink, so long as it fits in a bag or soft-sided cooler for races. MLB did not allow that for the Speedway Classic. As such, the concessions and amenities are built with an understanding that people may not need them, but they’re there just in case.

MLB had just a few food trucks brought onto the concourse around the race track. That probably made for a great business day for each food truck, but as my experience may echo others, I waited about 45 minutes for the only real barbecue food available before the game even started (around 4 PM). Later during the rain delay, I waited about an hour and a half in line for coffee. Still very thankful Travelin’ Tom’s Coffee was there, though. 

The nightmare was made clear as we walked in to a gate on the lower concourse to find ONE beer vendor between gates 3 and 4, in the area below where you enter the Kulwicki Grandstand.

To that vendor’s credit, he was super nice, but he had to deal with constant shortages of supply and a very long line of people who were unfamiliar with the fact they could walk upstairs and find more vendors (as I found out after waiting in his line for a few beverages for far too long).

MLB missed an easy opportunity of just bringing down some Skyline from Cincinnati, maybe a Frybox or two, and a couple of concession stands from Atlanta. It would have provided great income opportunities AND given a sense of comfort to fans who are in a wholly unfamiliar place. Alas, they missed that. 

There was the Fan Zone area outside the track that MLB had set up with different activities and vendors that fans could take advantage of. Again, it was absolutely overwhelmed by the crowd. The Legacy Walk, which was something I wanted to see, was packed to the gills with people attempting to escape the enormous lines and crowds that surrounded the merchandise booths and anything that sold food and drink. 

Seriously, I’m pretty sure there were more people in line for the merchandise booths in the Fan Zone than attend a game at Great American ballpark on a 45 degree April day. 

The Fan Zone reminded me of what MLB sets up for the All Star Game. Again, absolutely the wrong logistical model for 90,000+ people. Those who were minding their own gates looked as if they were now meant to manage a shipwreck. It was said that in order to access the Fan Zone, you had to have a ticket…but again, there were over 90,000 tickets sold. Exclusivity doesn’t exist. That meant that there was simply a line just to take a picture of the “It’s Bristol Baby!” sign. 

The people that worked concessions and the gates and everything else around the event were very nice and welcoming. They did their best job to make up for the nightmare that was the seemingly misguided attempt to plan for this many people at one baseball event. Even when the merchandise booths were cleared out, I saw people still generously answering any questions that an unlucky fan had of them. 

But as those merchandise booths and the social media posts show, MLB accomplished its goal of having the largest crowd ever and making lots of money. You’ll be hard pressed to get a contrite statement out of Rob Manfred.