Matt Tifft is entering his Cleetus McFarland era.

The semi-retired NASCAR national touring regular has closed on the purchase of what remains of Mansfield Motor Speedway in Ohio and you don’t have to tell him that owning a racetrack doesn’t make a lot of business sense.

He and his wife, Jordan, do not intend to reopen a racetrack but rather a content factory that has elements of a traditional facility -- much like how Desoto Super Speedway gave way to The Freedom Factory.

Since selling his stake of Live Fast Motorsports, Tifft has occasionally competed in grassroots motorsports events while also looking for a large enough property in which to goof off in various vehicles with his friends.

“I’ve wanted to find a place to shoot some content,” Tifft told The Sporting News on Tuesday afternoon. “Every time I found a place, there were noise ordinances or zoning regulations so I couldn’t build here or there.

“One day, drove by Mansfield and had this idea. The location is centrally located between Cleveland and Columbus. We could do Cleetus style events. My cousin is a realtor so I asked around.”

Matt Tifft

The Tiffts eventually closed out on the property but it needs a lot of work. In 2020, a redeveloper bulldozed much of the racing facility that once hosted the NASCAR Truck Series. The catchfence is now at the nearby Attica Speedway.

It’s not even remotely a racing track right now.

The infield, once cleaned up, could still be used for car shows and a variety of entertainment events but the racing surface needs a lot of work. For now, Tifft plans to operate Mansfield Speedway as a dirt track but is going to have to start from scratch with the clay and intends to have it prepped and maintained by an expert.

With all of that said, he says ‘the bones were built good’ regarding the foundational infrastructure.

But again, Tifft knows that owning just a racetrack is not a viable business model these days so his vision is more expansive than that.

“We went to a Cleveland Guardians game a while back and Jordan and I were wondering why baseball wasn’t as popular compared to the Savannah Bananas,” Tifft said. “We looked at the Cleetus content and Jordan and I dug into why that works.

“What sells and what can we do to borrow from that or expand upon it?”

The idea is to create something similar to Banana Ball but using race cars in the same way that like Monster Jam is like where racing meets entertainment. This product would be purely theatrical for ‘this age of social media and virality.’ There would still be legitimate weekly style racing and touring events passing through but there needs to be auxiliary concepts to support it.

 “I’m still a racer and we both like the purist racing product but like you said, you can’t just operate a racetrack anymore,” Tifft said. “There has to be a draw and we have to find different ways to entertain and wider variety of people.”

And yeah, if Tifft and Company want to hop in race cars and shoot viral minded content like what takes place in Bradenton, Florida, they can do that too.

For now, the plan is to operate Mansfield as a dirt track as Tifft accurately points out that the geographic region is more dirt inclined anyway with stalwarts like Attica, Eldora Speedway and the Blaney owned Sharon Speedway dominating the scene.

“It’s just so hard to attract pavement cars in this area,” Tifft said. “In time, we’ll let the racers tell us what they want to do and make a business decision. We have the flexibility with the property that we could build a quarter mile drag strip or we could build a tiny bull ring pavement track too.

“There’s the real potential for a motorsports complex here but paving it will take a substantial and lucrative commitment from someone like Formula Draft or NASCAR.”

Tifft says the plan, construction complexities acknowledged, is to have a functioning racetrack by May 2026. The last dirt race at the track launched rocks at fans in the stands. The soil needs to be completely gutted and replaced. The main grandstands remain but Tifft wants to build Minor League baseball hills and beer garden style seating too.

But in the short term, the infield can be quickly turned around to begin hosting other events.

This purchase also means scaling back how much racing Tifft plans to do too. He’s dabbled in Outlaw Late Model, Late Model Stock and Super Late Model racing but this is going to be his primary responsibility moving forward.

“As we go into the next year, I don’t want to do anything that would jeopardize our investment,” Tifft said. “I’m still going to keep our dirt car and race it where I think it makes sense but I’m definitely going to race a lot less right now while we put together what we’re doing here.

“And really, if I just want to hop in a race car now and have some fun, we’re going to have a place where I can do that too.”

It’s kind of the point.