Evernham team profits from Gillett’s investment
By JIM PEDLEY
The Kansas City Star
In 2006 and early 2007, NASCAR’s television numbers were whittling, blotches of vacant seats were tinting grandstands and the phrase “plateauing popularity” was getting wide play.
No, it wasn’t a particularly attractive time to pump money into stock car racing.
But that is exactly what George Gillett Jr. decided to do, saying, “We think this is the right time to be involved with NASCAR.”
Now, Gillett’s investment is being repaid in race victories, realistic hopes for a Sprint Cup championship, a resurgence in Kasey Kahne’s career and the resuscitation of the race team Ray Evernham founded seven years ago.
“It’s kind of fun to see this whole thing working,” Gillett says.
Gillett is an entrepreneur with diverse business interests. He owns, among other things, the National Hockey League’s Montreal Canadiens, the Liverpool soccer team in England and ski resorts in the Rocky Mountains.
But there are a couple of things that bind his businesses, specifically personal interest in the endeavor and the ability to mix in his family’s involvement. For example, he decided to buy the mammoth Vail and Beaver Creek ski areas in Colorado in 1985 after taking a vote among family members — his wife and four sons, constituting the electorate.
Those two binding ties contributed to his decision to last year buy majority interest in the NASCAR team owned by Evernham.
Gillett, though, is far from being a mere money man when it comes to his race team. He grew up around cars. His father owned a Lincoln-Mercury dealership in his home state of Wisconsin.
As a youngster, Gillett followed the racing careers of Wisconsin drivers such as Dick Trickle.
“That has been a longtime love affair for me,” Gillett said of racing.
In 2007, the opportunity to get into NASCAR presented itself. Evernham, the former Hendrick Motorsports crew chief who helped secure Jeff Gordon’s first three Sprint Cup points championships, had founded a team of his own in 1999.
Working with Dodge, which decided at that time to get back into the sport, Evernham put together a two-car team that began to grow into a power. By the end of the 2006 season, the team had won 13 races, six of those coming in 2006 with Kahne doing the honors.
In 2007, the Evernham team began to struggle. It fell behind the power teams of the day. One reason for that was a waning of energy on the part of Evernham, who would later admit to burnout.
That was also a time when conventional wisdom said the sport was losing some of its power.
Gillett, never a fan of conventional wisdom, saw the situation as perfect for his entry into NASCAR. Slipping ratings and slowing turnstiles be damned, as Gillett bought majority interest from Evernham and Gillett Evernham Motorsports was born.
“I think that some of the challenges that people saw in NASCAR were exactly the kind of things that created opportunities,” Gillett said. “For every problem, there is an opportunity. We have a tendency, as a family, to look at opportunities. We saw television ratings plateauing, but we saw a tremendous increase in the other forms of access to the NASCAR family through the Internet and other various forms of access.”
Gillett said he also was impressed by the NASCAR fan base, which he called the most loyal and avid in all of sports. He saw tremendous opportunity in that.
“Pocketbooks follow avidity,” Gillett said.
He also said the penetration of NASCAR is unique in sports. “We think you get returns at twice the market share because of the tremendous fan support,” Gillett said.
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