Drift Racing
Popularized by The Fast and the Furious movies and a dedicated fan base of gamers, drift racing, or drifting, is a growing motor sport for the 18- to 34-year-old demographic.
These Gen X-ers and Y-ers exhibit extreme-sports sensibilities unlike earlier generations. But I suspect that it's the Baby Boomers who figured out a way to capitalize on this growing, action-packed sport.
Forumula Drift measured crowd growth increases of 15-20% at each of its seven events last year. It's also a marketing Paradise for those ever-important 18-34 young male eyeballs.
Drifitng is a motor sport, founded on the mountain roads of Japan 20 years ago, in which drivers control 200- to 600-horsepower cars while sliding sideways at high speed through a marked course. Judging is based on execution and style rather than who crosses the finish line first.
"It's everything exciting about traditional motor sports condensed," says Vaughn Gittin Jr., the highest-ranked American in the world last year who defeated the world's best Japanese drivers in an event three years ago. "There's screaming tires, smoking engines and cars totally out of shape."
Who needs video games when you can experience the real deal?
