[piano intro] - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein.

Welcome to Side By Side.

My guest today grew up loving NASCAR and the racing world at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

As a teenager, his job there was cutting grass, picking up trash and selling tickets.

Now he runs a company that owns the Charlotte Motor Speedway, as well as other racetracks from as far west as Texas and California, and as far north as New Hampshire.

Today we'll meet Marcus Smith, the President and CEO of Speedway Motorsports.

- [Announcer] Funding for Side By Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by.

- [Narrator 1] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally, thanks to our teammates.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.

- [Announcer] The Budd Group has been serving the southeast for over 60 years.

Specializing in janitorial, landscape, and facility solutions, our trusted staff delivers exceptional customer satisfaction.

Comprehensive facility support with the Budd Group.

- [Narrator 3] Truist.

We're here to help people, communities, and businesses thrive in North Carolina and beyond.

The commitment of our teammates makes the difference every day.

Truist, leaders in banking, unwavering in care.

[gentle music] - Marcus, I've known you for a long time and I've admired you as a leader, as a business person, as a leader who picked up the legacy of your father, Bruton Smith, recognized across the state by so many.

And you have done a spectacular job being the President and CEO of Speedway Motorsports.

And I gotta figure out today, what is it you guys do?

Because I used to think all you did was the Charlotte Speedway.

- The NASCAR racing.

- Yes.

- Right, right.

- And then the more I dug in, the more I realized you've got something going on all over this country.

And I want our viewers to sort of become more familiar with what is it this company does and where do you do it.

Like for example, you're in California, you're in New Hampshire.

- Right.

- You're in Texas.

- Sure.

- Tell me about Speedway Motorsports.

- Well, the biggest thing is we have great people.

We have a great team, and I love to think about my speedway family.

It's really just amazing to think about our 12 different properties around the country.

Sonoma is in California, the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, places like New Hampshire Motor Speedway, our home base in Charlotte at the Charlotte Motor Speedway.

But we host big NASCAR weekends, and drag racing, and car shows, and music festivals, and all, all sorts of things.

But, you know, it really starts with great people.

- And Christmas.

Big Christmas.

- Yeah, Christmas light shows.

- Yes.

- Those are fantastic for the communities we're in.

- What does it mean to have a speedway?

Do you own the land?

- Great question.

- What is it that you actually own?

What is the asset?

- Sure.

So we own the land.

And we, in a lot of cases, we built the speedways, and in other cases we've bought existing properties and built up or added on and improved.

But when you own a speedway, you're in charge of a lot of plant and equipment, so to speak.

And that property is there to operate, not just NASCAR races, but all sorts of events.

And we're really good at big events.

This past weekend we had an INDYCAR in Nashville at the Nashville Super Speedway.

We had a motocross and a monster truck show in Dallas, Texas.

We had a 3,500 person event out in Sonoma at the Sonoma Raceway.

And we had a big party at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and just kept really busy.

And of course, this weekend we've got an event coming up.

There's always another event, another NASCAR weekend, that we're getting ready for, we're hosting it or we're cleaning up after.

- You own the property.

You're on the property.

You have not just car racing, you have other events using this facility.

How many employees do you have?

Like a thousand employees or so?

- So we have about 700 full-time employees.

And then every event, we'll flex up to whatever is needed.

You know, for a NASCAR weekend, about 2,500 employees.

- Do these people rent the facility?

I don't understand the relationships between the speedway, the track, and whoever does X race.

- Right.

So most of our events, we are the host.

We're the producer of the show.

So sometimes we co-produce, like with a company like Feld Entertainment, where we host motocross and supercross with them.

They bring their show of motorcycles or monster trucks.

And our team handles a lot of the, what we call back of house elements.

The food and beverage, the parking, the security, maintaining the site.

- And you get paid by, you know, forgive me, but I gotta dig a little bit there.

- [Marcus] Sure.

Yeah.

- So your revenue sources are what?

Renting the facilities, running the concession stands, charging for parking, selling paraphernalia and t-shirts.

- Our major revenues, I call it the three-legged stool.

It's broadcast rights from big events.

- Ah, broadcast rights.

Okay.

- It's consumer related revenue, like.... - And broadcast rights, do you get 'em, or does the, those get divided over a bunch of people, right?

- We share it.

- Yes.

- We share it.

So just like any major sporting event, there's a sharing formula between the athletes and the owners, and so forth.

- Yes, yes, yes.

- So we have broadcast rights, consumer-driven revenue, which would be tickets and souvenirs, and food and beverage, parking and camping.

And then corporate revenues, which are sponsorship and special entertainment.

- So if someone, gimme an example, for example, of the biggest race that happens in Charlotte.

- The Coca-Cola 600.

- Okay.

I think we're all familiar with Coca-Cola 600.

Coca-Cola is just a sponsor.

Correct?

- They're a sponsor, that's right.

- But there are a lot of race car drivers and their sponsors, the companies they work with.

- Correct, yeah.

- Like Hendricks or like.... - Right.

- Who would be the major ones?

- Rick Hendrick with Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing.

You've got Michael Jordan and Denny Hamlin with 23XI, Roger Penske with Penske Motorsports, and all sorts of great titans of industry and sports entertainment that have NASCAR teams.

And they show up at the venue.

NASCAR, we have a long-term agreement with NASCAR where we host the Coca-Cola 600 on Memorial Day weekend.

And we handle the party, so to speak.

We make sure that you've got all the tickets and the traffic and the toilets and the.... - AV and the... - All that sort of thing.

So, they show up and they operate the event, what happens on the track and in the garage, we handle everything else.

- They're responsible for what driver drives, they're responsible for the pits and so on.

- Right.

You'd be amazed.

You know, a NASCAR race, there are almost a thousand tractor trailers that move from track to track in the NASCAR world.

Every team.

- How many?

A thousand?

- Almost a thousand, it's about 700.

- A thousand, yeah.

That's where they put the car on the trailer to bring it in.

- Two cars and a tractor trailer.

You've got the television compound.

You've got souvenirs, and food and beverage, and security and communications.

- And you park all those there?

- We do.

- A thousand?

So how many acres is.... - I'd say maybe 700, 750.

- But that's a lot of 'em.

- It's a lot.

- How many acres is the Charlotte Speedway?

- About 1200.

- 1200 acres.

- That's right.

- What part of that is the actual track?

- About 150.

- I see.

- Lots of camping.

Lots of tailgating.

- Seating, meeting space.

- Correct, correct.

- All of that.

Very interesting.

Very interesting.

What's the toughest part of your job?

- You know, I think the toughest part for us in our event management is, when I mentioned earlier how we have 700 full-time people, but then 2,500 for a single event at one venue.

It's training that 2,500 that come in to help us put on events.

So training, when you're not doing it every day.

Every NASCAR event, it's a little bit like golf.

You know, you don't have the Masters every weekend at Augusta.

But Disney, everybody knows Disney.

You show up at Disney, and that venue is everyday operating.

And they have tomorrow.

I always tell our team, we don't get tomorrow.

Because the big event is on big event day, and tomorrow, that's when we clean up, so we gotta get it right.

- Have you ever had a big mess, a big adversity that happened?

That was really.... - Oh yeah.

- Kept you up at night and kept you up for weeks and got your blood pressure up?

- Big challenge of, you know, a sellout crowd will create big challenges with traffic, with lines and parking challenges and all those things.

So, every time we have had an overly successful event, we really struggle to make sure that it is something you wanna come back to.

So, my dad always said, "Sell to sell again", and "The details matter so much."

One of his other sayings is, "Inspect what you expect", and "You gotta check everything and all the details".

- What's the capacity of the Charlotte Speedway?

- Charlotte is about 150,000.

- 150,000 people.

- Yes.

- Plus all the people who work there.

- Yes.

- Plus all the people who participate there.

- Correct.

- Have to enter and exit that place.

- Lots of moving parts.

You know, the highway patrol does a phenomenal job to help us with the traffic management on the highways, local law enforcement, and a great team of people that are event professionals that help the event go along well.

- So in the course of a year, how many events would be, again, I mentioned Charlotte because most of our viewers familiar with that.

- Sure, yeah.

So Charlotte Motor Speedway hosts two NASCAR weekends a year, the Coca-Cola 600 and the Bank of America Roval 400.

We've got two big car shows every year.

The Christmas show that starts up around Thanksgiving and goes through New Year's.

We usually have a music festival or two.

We just finished up with our motocross event.

We've got a great dirt track for dirt track racing fans that is active a couple of times a year.

Every summer, we host this great event called the Summer Shootout.

And the Summer Shootout is made up of race cars that we build in Harrisburg, North Carolina called Legends cars.

And about 75% of all the current NASCAR drivers started in a Legends car at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

- Really?

- It's really phenomenal.

- Which of the 11 racetracks altogether, which is the biggest one?

- You know, Charlotte is our home base.

So in terms of.... - Let's say in terms of acreage.

- Acreage, I think the Sonoma Raceway is actually our largest.

- Really?

- We have a lot of land in Sonoma.

I think it's over 1800 acres that we've got there.

But also Las Vegas Motor Speedway, close to 1500 acres.

The Texas Motor Speedway, everything is bigger in Texas.

- It is.

- There's a lot of land at these properties.

- How about in terms of attendance, in terms of spectators, fans.

- So our biggest event overall is an event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway called the Electric Daisy Carnival.

It's a huge music festival.

It's one of the biggest in the world.

165,000 people a night for three nights in a row.

We have over 10,000 campsites at this event.

It's really tremendous.

- What do you do?

Do you go out there two weeks before and.... - I don't, but we have a dedicated team that is there and working on it for months.

You know, they start setting it up months in advance, all the details.

We work really closely with our partners on it, on all those events to make sure that things go well.

- You know, Marcus, what's unique about you is you never wanted to do this stuff.

You wanted to be a doctor.

- [chuckling] That's right.

Yeah, [indistinct].

- Or a journalist.

- I really wanted to be a doctor.

I wanted be a pediatrician.

And I thought, you know, actually, it's funny, my mother dropped this seed in my mind when I was young.

She always said, "You know, you'd be a great doctor."

And that kind of kept up.

And so when I was in high school, people started asking me, what do you wanna major in college?

And I thought about it and I just had this in the back of my mind, my mother saying, you'd be a great doctor.

And I thought about my pediatrician, who I liked a lot.

I also was pretty active with kids through camp counseling and that sort of thing.

And I enjoyed spending time with younger children.

And I thought, I'll be a pediatrician.

So I would say, I'm gonna go to Chapel Hill and I'm gonna study medicine and be a pediatrician one day.

And after calculus my freshman year didn't go so well.

- [chuckling] That does it for a lot of people.

- That did it, that did it for me.

- You're normal.

- I thought, okay, I'm gonna try this racing thing out.

And I had picked up a lot of trash and mowed a lot of grass at the Speedway.

- And sold tickets.

- Sold tickets.

But I never had what I call an inside job in the business end of racing.

And after my first summer working on the inside at Charlotte Motor Speedway, I got hooked.

And I loved it.

And I haven't looked back since.

- You know, your dad was a force known across the state, respected.

And then you came along and basically followed in his footsteps and became President and CEO of the whole enterprise.

What is it?

And your dad has gone on to Heaven now, and your mom as well.

And so you are left the bearer of this legacy of this family that began smaller and kept growing and growing.

And now you're doing a superb job managing all this enterprise.

You must think about your dad a lot.

- I do.

I do.

You know, I've got two brothers and a sister, and my parents left quite a legacy.

I always think I wanna make my mom and dad proud.

And you know, in the back of my mind, there's always the wisdom and the encouragement that I always had from both mom and dad.

They were great parents and gave us a lot in life, to be able to love our family, love our friends, and that was a big focus for my mom and dad both, was to always love your family and love your friends.

- Your brothers are younger than you?

- I'm in the middle.

I got one older and one younger.

Younger sister.

- And your sister is?

- She's younger.

- Younger than you.

What is the greatest lesson that your dad taught you about business?

- There were several.

He always said, "Inspect what you expect", "Do the right thing", and "Have dignity."

And he was always very determined and hardworking, but always wanted to have fun as well.

Anytime we would go and visit, I started tagging along with my dad when I was a teenager between school years.

And if I could go along with him on a trip to visit a location of one of our automobile stores or a speedway, I did.

And he would always say to our teammates, "I hope you're having fun."

And, you know, he said, "I don't really like that word work.

It's got a negative connotation.

I hope you have fun."

And then he also would just talk about how much he appreciated all of our teammates, and how we spend so much time together in our working family that it's important to take care of teammates and to take care of the customer and to do the right thing.

- What made him think of the idea in the first place?

Why did he start this business 65 years ago?

What happened that caused him to do that?

And what was his first step?

- So, my dad grew up in the era of the Great Depression, part of the Golden Generation.

And he was born in Oak Borough, North Carolina on a farm.

Youngest of eight.

And he knew very early that he didn't wanna work on a farm all of his life.

He wanted to get off the farm.

His first job was at a sawmill.

But the first time he had an opportunity to promote a race, he was 17 years old, and his friends and he were together talking.

And they liked racing.

Somehow they liked auto racing.

And they needed somebody to promote a race.

And they said, "Bruton, why don't you do it?"

And he said, "Okay, I'll do it."

He went to the local person to talk to about parks and recreation, about leasing a track.

He struck a deal with a handshake and promoted his first race.

And he said he made a little bit of money and decided to do it again.

And that was how it all started.

- Wow.

Wow.

- And this first car he sold, he was also 17 years old.

He had a car.

He sold it for more than he paid for it.

And he said, so I did it again.

And before you know it, he's in the car business.

- Again and again and again.

[Marcus chuckling] Yes.

And now you have another company other than Speedway Motorsports.

What is it called?

- Sonic Automotive.

Yeah.

- Sonic Automotive.

- Sonic Automotive.

My brother David is the CEO of that.

- And what does Sonic Automotive do?

- We have new car dealerships and pre-owned dealerships.

We have a brand called EchoPark, that's a pre-owned retail around the country, and then also franchise automobile dealerships coast to coast.

About 200, a little more than 200 stores.

- 200 stores.

Are they all owned by the company or are they franchises?

- We have franchises like Ford and Toyota and Mercedes.

- Right, but the actual units are owned by the company.

- Correct.

Correct.

- Including real estate or your lease real estate?

- A little bit of both.

- So you are the real estate business.

- Right.

- And the automotive business.

- Yes, by default.

- And the event business and the hospitality business.

- Take care of teammates, take care of customers.

- Yes.

- All the same thing.

- Talk a little bit about North Carolina.

'Cause North Carolina is a magnet for families who wanna come and live here.

They love our climate four seasons of the year.

They love the fact that we have good roads and highways here.

They love the fact it's a great place to raise a family.

They have values here that families appreciate and promote.

They love the fact that we have a great educational system at every level, all the way to public universities, private universities, community colleges, et cetera.

You are, in a sense, contributing measurably to tourism in North Carolina, because those 150,000 people who come to Speedway Motorsports for any of those events certainly don't just come from North Carolina.

Where do they come from?

- All over, all 50 states are represented at an event like the Coca-Cola 600, a dozen or more foreign countries.

People fly in from all over to enjoy events that we host.

So it's a really special thing that we take seriously, that people are giving us their time and money and trusting us to provide a great experience for them.

- They're staying in our hotels, eating in our restaurants, buying gas.

- Oh, yeah, that's great.

- Paying landing fees at FBOs.

All the rest.

- Tourism impact is a really, really important thing for an economy like North Carolina.

You know, we want people to come visit, they leave their money in the state and then they go home.

- Yes.

- And we don't have to worry about all the other elements.

So a tourism economy is really valuable.

- Is big.

- Yeah.

- You ever tried to evaluate economic impact of your events cumulatively in a course of a year?

- We have not done that, but others have.

And we're over $300 million a year in economic impact for Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Yeah, it's really tremendous.

- I think it could be more than that.

- Well, it could be.

And I haven't seen the numbers lately, but a single NASCAR weekend like Coca-Cola 600 is approaching $200 million in impact when you consider all the people coming from all over, the business that happens.

And the entire NASCAR industry is really based around Charlotte and Charlotte Motor Speedway.

You've got Mooresville, and Cornelius, and Charlotte, and Concord, Harrisburg.

You know, Daytona is the official home base of NASCAR, but the real industry happens all around the speedway.

- Is Daytona part of Speedway Motorsports?

- It's not.

That's where the France family who started NASCAR lives.

And they have the Daytona Speedway there and headquarters.

- So they'd be a competitor of yours?

- We host NASCAR events, they host NASCAR events.

They own NASCAR.

- I see.

- It's a very unusual sport.

And it's not a league as much as it is a tour of competitors and teams.

So we work together, and if it's a good event somewhere that we attract that's not ours, it's still good for us and good for the sport.

- Charlotte Speedway is located in Mecklenburg?

No, it's is located...?

- Right outside the Charlotte.... - Concord, North Carolina?

- It's in Concord.

The Concord people get mad at you that they don't call it Concord Speedway?

- You know, it's been called Charlotte Motor Speedway for so long, I don't think there's any hard feeling there.

- They're confused themselves.

They don't know where it is.

- It's been good for Concord, Cabarras County.

- Of course.

- Harrisburg.

It's a really, really important part of the community.

- Of course.

Yeah, of course.

As you look forward, Marcus, what do you see in the future of your business?

Is there anything in technology, AI, human behavior, mobility of citizens, economic force, that can affect your business in a way that can either propel it or damage it?

- I think so.

You know, in NASCAR, you've got a lot of technology now.

And every race team is using predictive technology to understand strategy on the track in an event.

You can also use a lot of technology in getting from one event to the other the most efficiently.

Lots of aerodynamic and performance technology is developed and tested in the NASCAR world.

At our events specifically, you know, we provide a really nice opportunity to test mobility options.

And a lot of our properties in Vegas and Sonoma and in New Hampshire and Texas, we work with advanced mobility companies on driverless vehicles, on battery electric vehicles, on all sorts of OEM testing opportunities, when you have that kind of property.

And it's an important part of our future.

I think for, for us, imagine a day when maybe you hop in a car that can drop you off and then go get other people.

Sort of an advanced Uber idea where you don't have to drive, but it's more automated.

And I think that's where automated driving, maybe light rail, bus lines have an opportunity.

- It's fascinating.

All fascinating.

- Yeah.

- Thank you for being with me on Side By Side.

- Thank you.

[gentle music] [gentle music] [gentle music] - [Announcer] Funding for Side By Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by.

- [Narrator 1] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally, thanks to our teammates.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.

- [Announcer] The Budd Group has been serving the southeast for over 60 years.

Specializing in janitorial, landscape, and facility solutions, our trusted staff delivers exceptional customer satisfaction.

Comprehensive facility support with the Budd Group.

- [Narrator 3] Truist.

We're here to help people, communities, and businesses thrive in North Carolina and beyond.

The commitment of our teammates makes the difference every day.

Truist, leaders in banking, unwavering in care.