The Urban Rez

Wesley Knight 0:00
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Marcus White 0:15
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Marcus White 1:16
Good morning, everybody and happy. Super Bowl. Sunday, Dr B, it is super bowl. Oh my gosh, this has been a great NFL postseason.

Dr. B 1:25
Yay. Super Bowl team. My favorite holiday beyond March Madness, two holidays, I totally celebrate Super Bowl and March Madness opening weekend. So who do you rooting for Marcus?

Marcus White 1:39
You know it's gonna be a tight match. I mean, family's from Seattle. I like Seattle, but I think I'm gonna go with New England on this one. Boo.

Dr. B 1:53
Okay, so you and me are enemies today, because I'm rooting for the Seahawks, although I'm a bonafide Cardinals fan. I'm rooting for my NFC West division, but most importantly, I wanted to highlight a few cool things about the Seattle Seahawks. You know, I have an organization called United natives that works with Native Youth and Sports camps, and Jake Bobo and Zach Charbonnet, who are currently with the Seattle Seahawks, did a free football camp for Native youth in Arizona. We had about 250 youth come out.

Marcus White 2:32
So if I told me that, I mean, shoot, I should go with the Seahawks on that one, they're helping out the youth, Native youth. Come on.

Dr. B 2:41
And not only that, they got, um, our native brother out there, Brandon peely, who's also Alaska Native. So we're rooting for our native brother too. So come on, dad, pull you tonight.

Marcus White 2:51
Pull me over. You pulled me over. Let's go. Let's Go Seahawks. Okay, yay, man. So we have a fun show in store for today. I'm gonna go ahead and jump right in and introduce him real quick. So today we're joined by Patrick Lindsay, senior vice president and general manager of the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Patrick joined lVms in March of 2025 with nearly two decades of experience in sports management and major event operations before the Speedway, he led the Shriners children open PGA Tour event here in Las Vegas, from 2015 to 2024 overseeing tournament operations and helping elevate the event's impact in the community. He also spent nine years with the PGA Tour, which gave him a front row seat to what it takes to execute world class events at the highest level in the next 30 minutes, we're digging into his vision for lVms in the community. What's new for March NASCAR 400 weekend and where he sees the speedway headed next? Patrick, thank you for being on the show with us.

Patrick Lindsey 3:57
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Guys. Absolutely.

Dr. B 3:59
Patrick, Wow, such a vast background in sports, and I absolutely love it.

Patrick Lindsey 4:05
Good, good, good. Yeah, you know, it's been, you know, growing up a lover of sports, there was only really one path since, you know, I'm not the biggest guy or the fastest guy, the strongest guy, you know, going the professional route for an athlete was probably not in my future, right? But, you know, to go in this event world and to organize sporting events was definitely right up my alley. So it's been a lot of fun so far.

Marcus White 4:32
That's awesome. So what is one thing you want Las Vegas to know about lVms in 2026 that most people still misunderstand.

Patrick Lindsey 4:42
Yeah, you know, it's, it's a great question. You know, I don't think a lot of people understand that Las Vegas Motor Speedway, you know, we're 1000 acres, so we're the largest sports and entertainment property in the state of Nevada. So, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on, especially here in Las Vegas. And, you know, we, we are the largest, and we were probably. Be, you know, one of the first kind of sports arenas here in Las Vegas. But it's not just about, you know, our NASCAR weekends and our NHRA weekends, and really, even motor sports. You know, that's that is our kind of, our bread and butter. But there's stuff that goes on at las vegas motor speedway every day, literally every day there's a corporate event, or there's a racing experience with our friends at the dream racing, or there's just something else going on that really will appeal to anyone. I mean, we have great food food fest that's that's going to be at the end of March, called foodie land. They'll have, you know, maybe somewhere around 60,000 people. I mean, that that event is just so much fun and brings in a whole kind of new demographic than just our typical NASCAR NHRA fan, and then obviously, you know, Electric Daisy Carnival and our friends and Insomniac that put on, put on that event that has, you know, over 100,000 people for three nights in a row. And just that, that event alone, you're just, it's just all the stuff that we do at las vegas motor speedway that's over and above just motor sports, and over and above just NASCAR that we're really proud of

Dr. B 6:08
that's awesome. If you had one sentence to describe the speedway's role in Las Vegas, what is it and why that sentence?

Patrick Lindsey 6:18
You know, I think that sentence, you know, I could probably go on and on about it, but it's, it's really about Las Vegas. Motor Speedway being a cornerstone of Las Vegas is rise in sports entertainment here in town and, or excuse me, in the country. You know, we feel like we've been a cornerstone of that, as we have held so many events that are globally televised, that have hundreds of 1000s of people, and we've done that, you know, years before kind of team sports arrived, right? So we would like to think that we, you know, maybe, maybe not. This is obviously more than one sentence, but, you know, it's, it's almost one word that we are the, almost the beginning cornerstone that has helped maybe propel Las Vegas to be, you know, considered the sports capital of the world. And we're really, we're really proud of that. I mean, between the beginnings of the NASCAR races, when we had over 100,000 fans, and, you know, globally televised to millions of people, you know, at least twice a year, and our NHRA races, you know, in our obviously, EDC as well. But, you know, we feel like we're that cornerstone that really has helped propel Las Vegas and everyone in the country and in the world to identify Las Vegas as being capable to host these large events. And we're really proud of that.

Marcus White 7:40
That's great. And, and I know the one thing that is very interesting as we're going to switch to talking about the vision for the community, you know, a lot of people don't even know, like the self driving cars that you guys have, that's that's there, that's right on from, from all these companies that's doing all this testing, which is pretty cool, yeah, you know.

Patrick Lindsey 7:59
And it's something that you know, kind of goes unnoticed, but, you know, we have, we have 1000 acres. A lot of it is paved, and we do have partnerships with a couple of different companies that will come on site and use our property to test their anonymous, you know, their anonymous car software. And that's pretty, pretty cool on a daily basis to kind of see that going on, but just also shows what we are capable of on that property. You know, again, it's not just motorsports, not just events, you know, we we rent a lot of land for people to come in and to test, you know, new generation products.

Marcus White 8:31
That's awesome. So what's your north star as a GM, attendance, economic impact, community, trust, year round usage. What are you optimizing

Patrick Lindsey 8:40
for, I mean, it will always be to bring in as many people as possible. And, you know, get our, you know, our attendance ever since probably 2008 has kind of dipped a little bit, and we're trying to get that number back up, and the sport is starting to rise up a little bit more. So we're excited to get our attendance number back up to the levels that we saw maybe a dozen years ago or so. And with that, with the attendance, comes better economic impact, right? It comes better community awareness. It brings more partners in. Allows us to do more with charity as well. You know, Speedway children's charities is, you know, one of my favorite things that I get to do as general manager of the Speedway and as to give back to the community. So as we drive more attendance to our races or to our property, you know, everything else rises as well. So we're excited to kind of start having some increase in our attendance, some of that pace started accelerating a little bit more than what it has, probably, over the last few years, and just identify ways to bring more people on site to enjoy the racing.

Dr. B 9:49
I have a couple of questions, but for me, I'm really big on community impact. You know, I think our communities have. Such a very diverse and amazing backgrounds that they can bring to the table, which is one of your favorite charities that you all do? And why is it one of your favorite charity work that you do?

Patrick Lindsey 10:14
Well, we have a foundation that we that we kind of hose in sight, host in sight called Speedway children's charity, and this this last year alone. You know, I should step back for a second. Speedway children's charities. It's kind of more of a foundation that raises dollars to eventually disperse them out into the community. Each chapter within Speedway motor sports, each race track has its own chapter, and last year alone, Speedway children's charities across all of our chapters did over $5 million back to local charities. Las Vegas chapter alone did $494,000 and we were able to distribute that out to 98 different charities. And it's all children's base and our grant ceremony, I'm kind of getting chose right now, thinking about it, because it was about it, because it was just such an impactful night. We have a grant ceremony the first week of December where all of those 98 charities came out to the Speedway, and we flew Santa in on a maverick helicopter and had this really great celebration. And with that, we gave out 98 checks for a total 404 $194,000 and just, you know, and gave all those checks out. And it was amazing, because each one of those charities, you know, had their board of directors, had the had the kids that that money was going directly back to. And it was awesome. I don't necessarily have one favorite charity that we obviously gave gave to, you know, a quick, a quick story with the charity side. When I first kind of came to town, I have a special needs son, and we were looking for like a little bike for him that kind of would adapt to him. And through Speedway children's charities, I didn't know at the time, obviously I'd be working with alongside of them. You know, a dozen years later, was able to gift my son an adaptive bike through this through Speedway children's charity donation. So now it's come full circle for me, and to say that I get to be a part of the organization that has also helped, you know, benefit my family is really cool, so that charity work is really great, and we're we're excited to raise even more money this year.

Dr. B 12:28
Thank you for that. That is definitely a full circle moment. So kudos to you all and your team there for doing such amazing work. I know you touched on some of the charity work, but what other community impacts, such as local vendors, tourism, tax impact, do you all bring to the community?

Patrick Lindsey 12:51
Well, you know, we have, you know, the tax impact, the economic impact. We're actually planning on moving forward with doing an annual economic impact, where we'll be able to sit down and eventually show the community what Las Vegas Motor speedway's economic impact is for a full year. So right now, we have done economic impact studies of just our NASCAR races, but we're wanting to do one that is the full year and shows exactly what Las Vegas Motor Speedway brings to the community on an annual basis. So it's not again, it's not just the NASCAR races. It's not even just EDC, right? It's the foodie land. It's LS Fest, it's our local Bull Ring series racing with that people come in, whether it's local or people coming in from out of town to race on our on our weekends, outside of that, you know, touch just real quickly on the local racing, but to be able to have a local racing series at our Bull Ring, I think, gets people interested in racing, gets people off the streets, possibly to be able to come in and to to get started and racing in our in our Bull Ring series. But then we also have our drag strip, where we have events called mayhem, where you can bring your own car out and you can race against your buddy down the strip. So down our drag strip that we call the strip, but it keeps people the idea there is to try to keep people off the streets. We don't want people racing on the streets. We want them to come to Las Vegas Motor Speedway in a controlled setting, and be able to to race their friend down the strip and a safe, legal way, right? So that's one of our impacts, I think, on the community that we don't get out in communicating enough that those opportunities exist for for anyone crystal if you want to come out and come out and race me down the strip, we can make that happen.

Dr. B 14:46
Oh, geez, I drive like a grandma. No, nothing against the grandmas. You all

Marcus White 14:57
are the urban RES is underwritten by Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Day. Las Vegas Motor Speedway is Nevada's largest sports venue, hosting two NASCAR race weekends along with an NHRA drag race, the largest electronic music festival in North America, the Electric Daisy Carnival and countless other corporate events annually, NASCAR weekend in Las Vegas, March, 14 through 15 Tickets on sale now@lvms.com So, Patrick, where do you think lVms can do better for locals, specifically, you know, not, not tourists, yeah.

Patrick Lindsey 15:29
I mean, we need to do a better job with our communication to make sure that they understand what we have going on up there. You know, just our, just our NASCAR race alone. You know, we have lots of different things. You know, a NASCAR race can be anything that you want it to be. You know, you can kind of pick the experience, and that experience can be anything you really want it to be, whether you want to just sit in the stands and have some great food and drinks, if you want to experience our fan zone, if you want to get up and close and personal with the drivers. There's some some of those opportunities as well. We have family deals right now where Tickets are free for for kids on our Saturday race, and then they're only $10 for our Sunday, large NASCAR race. So we try to be as family friendly as possible. We have value meals at our concession stands to make sure that, you know, we're it's affordable or affordable for our families to come and eat and drink. But then we also have, you know, I like to call it the Bougie experience, right? If people want that better hospitality experience, we have that as well. We have sweet level experiences, club level experiences, my personal favorite is called the blackjack club in the middle of the infield that's looking down right on the pits, with food and beverage included in that package. So we have, we have anything, we have any experience that anyone is kind of looking for, again, whether it's just your general mission ticket or all the way up to those high end bougie experiences. You know, we have access on the track and access into the pits and to the grid, all of those things exist, and we need to make sure we're doing a great job communicating out into the community. And to answer your question again, Marcus, I think we need to do a better job of that, especially on the family side, and making sure that the families like my own know what that experience can look like when you are deciding when my wife's deciding whether or not we're going to go do something or not, because she makes the decisions in my house, what we're doing and what we're not doing. We got to make sure that those that that we have activities for our kids and it's affordable for our families to come and we're working on that, and it's going to get better and better every year. We have a good experience now, but we only want to continue to improve it, but we need to do a better job of

Dr. B 17:46
getting that communication out. You had me at affordable. It's really important for all of us to know that you can experience something with your families that is affordable. With that being said, now kind of moving into the NASCAR dialog. What's new or upgraded about this year's NASCAR 400 weekend compared to last year?

Marcus White 18:10
Hold on, before you even answer that question, I have to tell you I remember when I went to my first NASCAR event, and man, it's a show like you guys put on the show, especially if you get there early before the race starts. It's a show, being able to go down and look at the cars and then as they're getting ready to get started. Man, I was just so impressed, because I was like, NASCAR, my people don't look like me. But no, I went. I was like, I was blown away.

Patrick Lindsey 18:40
You know, our fan zone, kind of out out front of our grandstands, has a lot of stuff going on. You have all those merch trailers, so you as a new fan, can go out there and buy all that loud NASCAR driver specific stuff or or the kind of the tame down stuff as well. But you know, you can start there, go into our neon garage, which is in the infield as well, and you can hang out and watch the drivers meeting. The drivers meeting is really cool. We have a lot of VIPs and a lot of stars in town will come to the drivers meeting. But the drivers meeting happens for about 15 or 20 minutes, and that's where NASCAR gives all of the rules to all the drivers. But you know, you can sit there and listen to that. I think we might be the only track that has a kind of open to the public drivers meeting. So the fans can sit right there on the exterior, it's right out in the open, and watch the drivers meeting. Then they can walk straight to the straight to the kind of start finish line, where we have a stage set up. Got driver, driver introductions. You know, we'll have a national, National Recording Artist doing the national anthem, and we'll have the starting grid where everyone's kind of hanging out in the starting grid again, all this, all the stars will will be on that, and you can feel the anticipation kind of build up before that race starts. And you know, it's a lot of fun, absolutely.

Marcus White 19:58
So any. Any new things coming up for the race in March compared to last year? I don't know

Patrick Lindsey 20:05
if there's a, you know, we're, our fan zone is going to be a little bit busier. Have a new partnership with Cracker Barrel. And where they're, they're going to sponsor, kind of our main, main stage, and have some activations very Cracker Barrel specific. Hopefully there'll be some some food that will be passed out, or some coupons in order to go to their Cracker Barrel locations to get some food that would be, you know, that that's something that's gonna be really fun. We'll have some, some artists entertaining on that stage as well. You know, all of our sponsors do such a great job. I mean, south point does a great job. Their activation is Toyota as well. But I would say, every year we try to improve our fan engagements and activations, and that's one of the things that we're really going to be focused on moving forward, and try to boost that up each and every race, because we'll have, we'll have two a year, right? We have one in the spring and one in the fall. So every time we roll out a new event, we want to make sure we're bringing new fan activations to make sure that people are always entertained at at the track. The racing is entertainment enough, though, right? I mean that the noise, the roar, is just it's just so much fun, but, but we know that in order to get our fans to continue to coming back year, year after year, you know, there has to be entertainment outside of just that noise, just that roar and that racing. So we want to continue to have new activations, new fan of activations, whether that's, you know, in our stands or in the fan zone. So that's something that we're going to continue working on over the next few years.

Dr. B 21:42
Working on over the next few years. Awesome, very cool. And I know we're talking about the experience. And so what's the fan experience you're most excited about before the game, or, I'm sorry, before the green flag and after the checkered red flag?

Patrick Lindsey 21:59
Yeah, it's, you know, it's the drivers. Me, I think the drivers meeting is so cool for our cement, for our spectators, again, that's the opportunity for our drivers to get the rules of the race for our particular race, and all the fans to sit around and to watch that. Again, that that usually happens behind closed doors, and this is out in the open in what we call the neon garage in our infield, open, open for the public to come, to come in, to come and listen to and everyone always kind of like lines, like a red carpet barricade line that we have. They're getting autographs before and after. So it's really engaging for that fan and for them to hear kind of what those rules are and how the how the drivers react, is really cool. And then that walk of all of the drivers, from that drivers meeting to our pre race stage, on the start finish line, where they get introduced, and walk across the stage to, you know, 1000s of adoring fans, is really cool.

Marcus White 23:02
So okay, for first timers, what's the ideal? And I'm air quoting perfect day itinerary at lVms, rival time, parking, best viewing, food must do.

Patrick Lindsey 23:14
Yeah, yeah. So I would, you know, we'll have a one o'clock green flag on on March 15. Out. Arrive couple hours early. Parking is free, so I arrived couple hours early. Get your parking spot. If you're interested in tailgating a little bit, you can, you can do that. So you know, gates will open at eight o'clock. Green flag is not till one. But you know our our parking lots open at 6am so if you're a tailgater, you know, you can get there early, can do some breakfast burritos and some sausages, and you can text me, and you can tell me where you are, so I can come, have one but, but those opportunities exist. But, you know, I would, I would arrive at least two hours early, get settled and enjoy that fan zone. I know I've talked about the fan zone a lot, but I would enjoy that fan zone and everything that has that it has to offer, from the Toyota experiences to the Cracker Barrel experiences, the the merchandise trailers that we have, the entertainment that we have in that area, South points exhibit, they're always giving away some great stuff, and they're, they're, they're big wheel that you'll get to spend. So I would enjoy that I would, I would find, find out where your seats are, and then I would just go explore. I would walk up and down the concourse. I would see all the different food options and decide what you want if you had that neon garage pass, I would definitely go into the neon garage. And I would definitely, definitely watch the drivers meeting, and then watch the pre race activities, where we'll have some music, and we're going to have a flyover by by Nellis. So our partners right there at Nellis Air Force Base are so incredible to work with, so they're going to provide a flyover for us. So and then I would just kind of hunker in wherever your seats are and enjoy some really great racing.

Dr. B 24:59
I. So this is more of a personal question in regards to leadership and behind the scenes and all the work that you do, what's the hardest decision you've ever had to make as a GM, and what did it teach you?

Patrick Lindsey 25:14
It's really great question. And you know, only being at las vegas motor speedway for almost, almost a year now, haven't had a lot of hard decisions yet. However, what, what has come with taking over from kind of, you know, someone in a previous journal manager who had been here for for 26 plus years. There's a ton of institutional knowledge there. And, you know, he's kind of a legend sport, and a legend here in Las Vegas because he had had been here for so long, he had done so many amazing things as well. Taking over for that individual was has been extremely, extremely challenging. But what had kind of come along with that was a few other people who had been with him for a long time as well also chose this is the great time to move on or to retire, and it's taking so the challenging part of this is, you know, trying to make sure that I'm connecting with the staff and to make sure that, you know, nothing is really changing here. You know, I want to come in as a leader, and to support them as much as I can and make sure that they understand that I am very sincere in saying that and trying to provide a leadership approach that. And I got this from Nellis in a community today, and it has just really stuck with me, and I love it so much. But Nellis teaches their commanders that leadership traits that are extremely important to them are to be humble, to be approachable and to be credible. And I try to take those things with me, those three those three words with me every day. You know, I want to be humble. I want to open up and make sure everyone knows that. You know we're going to move forward on some stuff. We might not be right if we need to change it, we can change it, but we're going to be humble on our approach that, you know we're going to try some new things, and we might have to walk some of them back, but we're going to keep moving forward and try to do our best with this. But I want to be approachable. I want to have an open door policy always both my doors wide open. I want people to come in and speak to me, but I also want to be credible with in those conversations, and that means following up on all the things that we discuss. So I've tried to enact those, those three philosophy points, but also, as some people were transitioning out of roles, it was sitting down with each of my team members, especially my department heads, and talking to them about what their wants and needs are, what they would like to see from me, what they would like to see from other people. And then as as positions change, take that opportunity, take that time as an opportunity to look at that department or that role and see if anything needs to change. And we did that. We did that in three different roles. Seem to be four different roles. So to the it's been very challenging just trying to take all of those notes that I got from my teammates and try to put them into an organizational structure that flows people understand and works. And the humbling part of that is, I haven't been right on all of it. We've walked some of it back. We've made some changes, but it's being open minded to do that, so I've also really that was challenging, but it's probably the thing that I've enjoyed more than anything else so far, because also gave me an opportunity to get to know every single one of my employees, maybe more than than I would have if I didn't have the opportunity to make some changes.

Marcus White 28:51
Okay, so last question, when the weekend is over and you're driving home, what needs to happen for you to say we nailed it? Well, I

Patrick Lindsey 28:58
want everyone to be able to come and go safely, right? I mean, that's, that's, that's number one. No doubt about it. People want to come and come and go as safe as possible. Smiles. You know, I want people to come and go and be safe and also leave with smiles on their faces. So, so that, that would be, that would be my biggest takeaway, I want people smiling when they leave.

Marcus White 29:22
Awesome. Well. Dr B, Go Seahawks.

Dr. B 29:27
Let's Go Seahawks. Seahawks. Been such a pleasure sitting here with you here today, and we all got to remember to take a piece of that humble pie.

Marcus White 29:36
Absolutely. The urban RES is underwritten by global wave consulting, international specializing in IT solutions from network penetration testing and vulnerability management to SAP basis support and web application security. Global wave helps businesses stay secure and efficient in a digital world. For more information, global wave ci.com

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