Financially NHRA has been circling the drain, albeit at the top of the bowl. Your local track buys into NHRA for the opportunity of a divisional meet and the legal shield of being with such a large sanctioning organization. If your not in the NHRA professional or sportsman series, you are happy to have a place to race. There is cache in the NHRA name and tracks have the opportunity to bank on it. Drag racing will never be like Nascar or its prodigy. Since Wally's direct involvement, as was mentioned, promoters tried to copy Nascar and it won't work. After the nitro show spectators leave the stands.And on the local level there's that 10-20-50 lap event(local roundy round) that keeps the spectators connected to the event. That doesn't happen with drag racing. Very few spectators in the stands. But then you can have 2 guys get together for a street race and you can bring out 100 people. Look at all the u Tube street races. Drag racing has not been promoted well since the 80's. The market is alive but fragmented. Its hard as a promoter to get drag racers to an event, excluding those popular events. A dirt track racer will make every event on their circuit but a drag racer struggles, excluding those die hard racers. How does a local guy promote a street race where the start time is after midnight? Lots of racers and spectators show up and last till 3 AM. Drag racing is an interesting sport it just needs some better promotion.