Fenway Sports eyes N.H. track

Executives at Red Sox owner John W. Henry's sports marketing firm acknowledged yesterday that they had held discussions about buying the New Hampshire International Speedway in Loudon.

The Loudon track has emerged as an important one for NASCAR's flagship Nextel Cup Series, hosting two races every year. Earlier this year, Henry, principal Red Sox owner through his Fenway Sports Group, bought half of what is now Roush Fenway Racing, NASCAR's largest team. Fenway Sports president Mike Dee said buying the track in the future had been discussed, though not at length, between the Henry camp and that of Bob Bahre, who owns the track.

"I won't deny that it has come up. But at this stage of the game, [portraying] that it's a live and intense discussion is grossly exaggerated. We're obviously new to the sport," Dee said. "I think that he's probably at a very early stage of understanding what he's going to do with it, and we're at an earlier stage of figuring out whether we're interested."

FoxSports.com first reported the talks yesterday, quoting Roush Fenway co-owner Jack Roush and Bahre. A message left for a Bahre representative was not returned yesterday.

The New York Times Co., which owns The Boston Globe, holds a 17 percent stake in the company that owns the Red Sox and Fenway Sports Group.

Dee downplayed the discussions, saying that Bahre and Fenway Sports speak regularly about the business of racing. Beyond that, there is much Fenway Sports doesn't know about operating a race track, particularly how to wring revenue out of a facility that hosts major NASCAR races just twice a year.

"I don't know the economics of the business enough. You can look at it and say if they had 15 races, it'd be better than two. I'd like to tell you that it was in my wheelhouse in terms of core competencies, but I haven't looked at it at all," he said.

Still, Henry's track record with the Red Sox proves that he is adept at finding new revenue streams in existing franchises. While the Red Sox only play 81 games a year at Fenway Park, all between April and October at the latest, the facility hosts corporate and other events year-round. Fenway Sports was conceived as the team's external marketing arm, but has grown into a powerful sports marketing entity on its own, involved in baseball, college sports, professional golf, and more.

And racetrack ownership can be lucrative: International Speedway Corp., a Daytona, Fla., company that owns and operates NASCAR tracks, reported net income of $18.3 million, or 35 cents per share, for the quarter ended May 31, down from $30.7 million, or 58 cents per share, for the same quarter in 2006. In February, the company paid $102.4 million to acquire the 62.5 percent of Raceway Associates that it didn't already own. Raceway Associates owned the Chicagoland Speedway and Route 66 Raceway.

Keith Reed can be reached at reed@globe.com.