Frank Bolter trying to build sustainability into short tracks with PitPay

“Its about delivering a major league experience for grassroots racing.”

That line sums up what Frank Bolter is all about when pitching his PitPay platform to promoters and track operators. Racers and fans of a certain age remember waiting upwards of 30 minutes at the back gate in a line to get a wristband and it was an experience killer, ‘especially if you’re trying to wrangle a seven-year-old and you’ve blankets or a cooler in your hands,’ says Bolter.

So that is just one of the many experiences Bolter, a longtime racing everyman who has done just about everything in both professional and grassroots motorsports, wanted to remedy in creating PitPay. It offers track promoters, and more importantly, their racers and fans an litany of conveniences:

• Mobile pit passes
• E-sign waiver and releases
• Event registration
• Reserved pit spot selection
• W9 collection
• Easy to use fan ticketing
• Mobile tickets

In some ways, all of this sounds elementary, especially for those who attend all manner of sports or entertainment events but racing promoters are inherently skeptical of new technologies, stuck in the way they’ve always done things, especially if there is a degree of comfort and success in doing it.

“There is just a better way to do all of this,” Bolter said. “We just started out doing digital release forms. I thought it was stupid honestly having to wait in line for 20-30 minutes waiting for everyone to sign or fill out forms they could have done on their phone or in line. Then we extended it to registration and membership.

“With what we’ve built, CARS Tour is just as professional and efficient as any NASCAR series these days.”

The Snowball Derby this week is on PitPay, and both fans and racers alike will find helpful tools in the app to prepare them for race day, whichever race day(s) is of interest to them.

“Like, if you’re driving the trailer into the track, you don’t even have to get out of the truck now,” Bolter explains. “You’ve already filled everything out and they can just slap the wristband on you and let you drive through.”

It’s becoming a more common experience but it wasn’t until Bolter revolutionized the space. And again, for a guy that has worked in the business management, sponsorship and activation spaces, most notably with Kyle Busch, and spotted at the highest levels and even won the Indianapolis 500 with Ryan Hunter-Reay, Bolter acutely understood the needs of the industry.

While its up to the promoter and track to populate their respective pages, the platform also is able to serve fans with news, streaming information, race results, driver biographies, links to various merchandise platforms.

It comes back to the experience.

Bolter says short tracks need to be efficient and a value to fans to stave off the coming storms, whether it is closures due to the rising cost of real estate they sit on, the general trends of the industry or whatever specific issue a track has.

“I think we’re going to lose 15-20 percent tracks in the next couple of years,” Bolter said. “I’m trying to build some sustainability into the model. Fans want a better experience and tracks struggle sometimes knowing how to communicate with them. Right now, I think we have fans that just accept the way it is but how do you build on that and get new people to the track? It has to start with convenience and experience.”

Bolter says the technology provides data to promoters to let them know what they need to be focusing their business investments into. For the longest time, tracks didn’t have a refund policy because it was just too complicated. A standard weekly show didn’t have the same price point as a touring event, but both had the same blue wristband. Now PitPay has simplified that process too for tracks who want to better serve fans in that way.

“We’re just using technology to raise the the experience quality,” Bolter said.

Bowman Gray was a walk up cash facility for half a century but is now preparing to maximize the platform to offer season tickets. Bolter is working to make it easier for tracks to interface with those most likely to be customers.

“My vision for the future is that beyond just making it easier for everyone to get in the stands, get in the back gate,” Bolter said, “is that fans are sitting in the stands, and they’re getting push alerts for the race they’re watching. They get real time starting lineups, stories, the full engaging experience.

“The industry caters to those who know the drill but again, I want to give everyone the tools to starts attracting new fans. We have to improve the experience. There’s no excuse not to make some headway with the technology we have now.”