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ALMS has always been "Marketing Challenged." I've never seen one of their events advertised in advance and if you tally the number of ad spots for the LeMans 24 hours for this past June, the number would be threefold the number of ad spots ALMS has run during thier entire 10+ year existence.
I'm sure what it is about sportscar racing, there has always been a "people will find it and will come" attitude. Which they always have had - as I found it during the IMSA GTP hey-day in the early to mid-1980's. Unfortuately, this old approach doesn't work in a society bombarded with the most current.
What makes the ALMS's laxed approach even more dishartening is they have a decent product (granted is was better in years past (2007-2008)) that can build its message around family oriented (or perhaps father and son), with easy access to the padock, drivers, teams, mechanics, and the occational celebrity (try getting this access without VIP credentials at a F1 or tin top event). This coupled with their green racing initiative should make their branding effort easy.
Unless the future of ALMS is to compete with the solar car races entered by various colleges and universities - which for the record, I did see an ad spot for on the Discovery Channel.
Regarding Versus, I do have access. However, I have heard that the only way to actually find the channel was to pass out after a hard night of drinking and hope that your forehead hits the remote and enters the correct channel number (or advances the channels to the upper echelon of one's program guide).
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