Menage a trois!
By TMX Archives on 17th Mar 03
JUST WHEN you thought it was safe to read your press releases, it seems that everyone's favourite feuding couple - the AMA and Clear Channel Entertainment - are at it once again. And playing the role of the third wheel is the FIM. Having already been rescued from the edge of this abyss once recently, American supercross is wandering over for another look down the hole.
If you'll recall, AMA Pro Racing (a division of the American Motorcyclist Association, our motorcycle-sport sanctioning body) left the nest in November of 2001 in search of a new promotional group. They found one in Jam Sports, a Chicago-based concert promoter with little experience in sporting events. Clear Channel, the current promotional body, made a deal with Dorna (the FIM's promotional arm) to ensure that the series would have a sanctioning body in the following years. For some months, it looked like the States would have two competing supercross series in 2003 - AMA/Jam Sports and CCE/Dorna.
Disaster - and that's what it would have been, have no doubt - was averted at the 11th hour and the companies signed a seven-year contract to remain a happy family. Now the seven-year itch seems to have set in, about six years ahead of schedule.
Much of the current tension revolves around the two - count 'em - supercross championship series for 2003. There is the regular AMA Supercross Series, beginning in Anaheim and ending in Las Vegas, that we see each year. But now we've also got the World Supercross GP, which is essentially the same series, minus Daytona and including the two international rounds, in Geneva and Arnhem (I will purposely avoid any 'A Bridge Too Far' references, if you were wondering - although it's tempting). This leaves us with two champions to be crowned in '03 - the American champion and the world champion. The only way a rider can be world champion is if he races the two European rounds - a pretty shrewd manoeuvre to get the boys over to the continent that hasn't been entirely successful - in other words, Ricky Carmichael isn't going.
Since the FIM has a claim to anything calling itself a 'world championship', they have stepped in to control the 'world' series even though it is also, in essence, the 'American' series - which is controlled by the AMA, which is still a member of the FIM... Confused yet?
Basically, the AMA doesn't want the FIM calling the shots in America. Clear Channel claims it was forced to sign the deal with the FIM/Dorna because of the whole Jam Sports fiasco - they don't necessarily want the FIM involved, either, but at this point 'want' has little to do with the matter.
The whole mess started spilling over the sides on November 26 when FIM president Francesco Zerbi threatened to expel the AMA from his organisation, giving the FIM full power over the series/series (the second 'series' being plural - damned vague English language). The AMA responded with a press release stating that 'the FIM lacks the authority to hijack AMA Supercross for its own interests'. And, horrifyingly inappropriate use of the word 'hijack' aside, they had a point.
Soon after the FIM-as-terrorists release, AMA Pro Racing dispatched another press release, this time announcing that it had filed a lawsuit against Clear Channel. As they explain it, the suit was intended to ensure that the 'cooler heads' agreement, stating that the AMA is the exclusive sanctioning body for AMA Supercross, would be upheld.