NASCAR events are a big stimulus to the Charlotte, North Carolina economy. Without a doubt, the most famous NASCAR promoter of all time is the Charlotte and NASCAR legend H. A. “Humpy” Wheeler. Now, Jay Howard, a former gopher of Wheeler, has taken the reigns for all of NASCAR’s biggest on track and off track events.
While a freshman in college in 1981, Howard became Wheeler’s gopher for the next four years during the race weeks in Charlotte. The following three years Howard worked for Charlotte Motor Speedway full-time.
Howard moved on to PRN for three years, and in 1987 while managing their entertainment and pre-race shows, he started his own promotions company. In 1995 JHE Production Group, Inc. hired its first employee.
Currently JHE has 74 full-time employees in Harrisburg, NC, just a few miles from Charlotte Motor Speedway. “Our priorities here are people, product, profit,” Howard said. “Profit will always be third. We have an incredible culture, one that we work on. We put a lot of time and effort into creating and maintaining our culture. Sometimes that can be difficult in a high growth spurt.”
The month of May is extremely busy for JHE. They are promoting and producing events for the NASCAR Sprint Pit Crew Challenge, NASCAR Rev’d Up, NASCAR Hall of Fame Grand Opening and Induction Ceremony, Food Lion Speed Street, and pre-race events for two different race weekends.
Howard informed me that, “Pit Crew Challenge and Food Lion Speed Street are unique to us, because we are the promoter and the producer for both of these events. For Food Lion Speed Street, we’re soup to nuts. We raise the sponsorship money, we produce the event, we hire the bands, we produce the concerts, we hire the police, we’re pretty much it.”
Last season the Pit Crew Challenge was only “180 tickets short of a sellout at Time Warner Cable Arena,” according to Howard. May 19th will be the sixth time the annual event has been held. It is in conjunction with the Sprint Cup All-Star week. The event is also televised live and on tape delay on SPEED.
Since 1996 JHE has promoted and producing the The Food Lion Speed Street festival. This year it is expected to bring a crowd of 400,000 to the free downtown Charlotte event, between May 27th and 29th. In 2009 Speed Street was voted Best Green Event and received the Carolina EVIE Award for being the best public event over 20,000.
“The three day event has two draws, drivers and bands,” Howard tells me. “We’re appealing to race fans and we’re appealing to event fans. The overall objective is to show people coming to town for the race, to show them a little bit of the city. And for people that are in the city, looking to go to events, expose them to a little bit of NASCAR.”
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