DOVER's costs to have a race!

Dover's two Cup races will cost the track more than $11 million in sanction fees to NASCAR in 2007.

Dover Motorsports operates four speedways - Dover International Speedway, Gateway International Raceway, Memphis Motorsports Park and Nashville Superspeedway.

The company also listed an "impairment charge" of more than $61 million for Nashville, Memphis and Gateway - devaluing the value of those tracks because of the lower-than-anticipated television revenues generated by the four Busch races at those tracks.

Dover expected the new TV deal this year to allot a bigger percentage to Busch races than the 5 percent allocated in the 2001-2006 package. But NASCAR is allotting only 5.75 percent of the new contract for Busch events.

With that impairment charge, Dover reported an overall loss of $35.345 million last year. It's after-tax adjusted earnings for last year were $5.7 million, the same as for 2005.

Zoinks, it sure does cost a pretty penny to play with the big boys (NASCAR).

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