A little more than five years ago, Kyle Riley was the owner of a trucking company who raced whenever he got a chance.

Fast-forward to 2020, and he’s still a trucker and drag racer at heart -- and one of the most successful promoters in the sport. 

Riley’s the founder and braintrust of SFG Promotions, which this summer paid $1.1 million to New Jersey’s Steve Sisko for winning a bracket race in Martin, Mich. For an encore, Sisko pocketed an $100,000 in the next day’s event with a different car.

SFG has several more big-buck bracket events on tap the rest of this year, and three to four more are slated for 2021. 

The seed that started Riley’s high-buck playground came to him in a dream during the winter of 2015.

Really.

And that dream was the basis of the SFG name: Sent From God.

“I had never before wanted to promote and be on this side of the sport, I always wanted to race,” said Riley, a native of Chicago who now lives in nearby Sauk Village, Ill. “Then this vision came from God that woke me up out of my sleep, and from that point ‘til now, it’s been full steam ahead from the promotion side of it.

“I raced NHRA for awhile and runner-upped at a couple of national events and did a little bracket racing. But I never, never once thought about promoting a race. I didn’t even know how to start.”

But awakened from his slumber, Riley made the trek from his bedroom downstairs to his computer and immediately began studying the intricate details of race flyers. The main objective, he said, was “to make a little bit of money, but at the same time give the racers the best deal they’ve ever seen.”

 

 

 

SFG’s first event was in July 2016 at Piedmont Dragway near Greensboro, N.C., with three days of competition, and at the end of each day, the winner had put $50,000 in his pocket. Riley capped the Super Bowl of Drag Racing field at 450 entries, and he required racers to pre-enter with $100 and the balance of $650 due at the gate. The field was filled in just four days, he said.

“When I first thought about doing it, the first few phone calls I made, everybody said the same thing: ‘Man, there’s no way you can do it,’ ” Riley said. 

Yet he did, and that sent the wheels spinning his Riley’s head of how to parlay the success of the Piedmont race into bigger, better things. He immediately scheduled an event for Nov. 2016 at Darlington (S.C.) Dragway -- the World Series of Bracket Racing -- and he called it “a huge success.”

Riding high with a pair of winners in his pocket, Riley then discovered the hard way that he wouldn’t hit a grand slam every time. That epiphany came when he returned to Darlington the following April with a main event that would pay a guaranteed $250,000 to the victor. It was, he said, a financial disaster.

“I think guys started to question whether we’d pay out as advertised if we didn’t get the car count we needed,” Riley said. “Even my wife and I had wondered, ‘OK, what if things go wrong? We could be eating baloney sandwiches for months,’ but she was all in on it with me. 

“We didn’t have a lot of pre-entries, but I think I was asking for more of a down payment that time -- might’ve been $500 or $1,000. I figured they’d all show up and pay at the gate -- but they never showed up,” he said.

He went in the hole “well into six figures,” but the silver lining came in the response from a contingent of older racers who came to him as the weekend concluded. 

“They shook my hand and said, ‘You’re a man of your word and the racers got paid. That won’t ever be questioned again.’ I knew it was going to hurt -- it was going to knock me to my knees -- but they got paid.”

Riley said he’s had other races “that failed,” most notably an event in Tucson, Ariz., that he scheduled as a way to test the waters for interest in big-buck bracket shows out west. 

“We got hammered,” he said. “That one was bad, bad -- the lowest car count SFG’s ever had. I want to say it was one-hundred-some entries, and I never dreamed that I could get less than 200. But it happened, and everybody got paid everything from the two 50-granders. I’ll go back to the West Coast, but not any time soon.”

 

 

 

In contrast for an over-the-top success story, there was July’s Jeg’s-SFG Million at U.S. 131 Motorsports Park in Martin, Mich., and racers responded. There were more than 600 entrants in his main event of the week. 

Riley said last week that his 2021 race will allocate $900,000 to the winner.

“For one, I did what nobody said could be done by guaranteeing $1.1 million to win a race,” he said. “Going down to $900,000 is $200K less risk, and I was able to come down on the entry fee. You can win life-changing money at our races without the big, big entry fee.”

But SFG is far from done with big payouts in 2020. 

National Trail Raceway near Columbus, Ohio, will host races paying its winners $25,000, $50,000 and $25,000 on Sept. 4-6. 

From Sept. 15-20, Riley’s crew will be at South Georgia Motorsports. The three biggest payouts on the schedule are $100,000, half a million, and $50,000.

A $100,000 top prize is at stake Oct. 2-4 at Cedar Falls (Iowa) Motorsports Park. Riley’s season will end Oct. 27-Nov. 1 at South Georgia with races that pay $20,000, $50,000 and $20,000 for a single $399 entry fee.

Riley already has the bulk of his 2021 plans in place, too.

From April 12-18, racing at South Georgia will be highlighted by two $100,000-to-win shows and another paying half a million. U.S. 131 will host the series June 28-July 4 with the $900,000 top prize and a pair of 100 granders. Darlington will have three $100,000-to-win shows during a Sept. 13-19 competition.

“I think that will be the best deal for me, to just do the three races,” Riley said. “On the other hand, I’ve had success with a small race at Cedar Falls several times, and I think I’ll do that one again next year, too.

“A lot of promoters don’t like us, but my intent is to help the racers, not embarrass the promoters,” he added. “I don’t care what they do or charge, I do what’s best for the racers. It’s risky to do it the way that I do it. After being around for four years, the racers appreciate it and are dialed in to what I’m doing.”