What happens when the vocal character behind Fishgistics invites North America’s top promoters of off-road desert racing, car builders, and racers to an organized Facebook Live video session? You get “The State Of Offroad Racing.” This star-studded video showcased lots of perspectives, interesting concepts, and a million thoughts from the guests. These people all contributed their feelings on what is currently happening and where they all hope to see the sport go.

Perhaps the most revealing commentary to come out of this event was a desire of race promoters to work together. The idea involved potentially developing a 5,000-mile race starting in Cabo San Lucas of Baja California, Mexico and finishing stateside in Reno, Nevada.

The State Of Offroad Racing took place on March 9 at noon. It  was hosted by Cameron Steele, Travis Clarke, and Austin Farner. The invited guests included Jose Abelardo Grijalva (President & Race Director for SCORE-International), Jeff Phillips (Race Operations Manager For Best In The Desert Racing Association), Dave Cole (President & CEO of King Of The Hammers), Cody Jeffers (President & Race Director for Mojave Off Road Racing Enthusiast), Neal Mason (Engineer & Owner of Mason Motorsports), Rick and Jeff Geiser (Owners & Truck Builders at Geiser Bros), John Vance (General Manager and Crew Chief of TSCO Racing), Racer Andy McMillin, Racer Seth Quintero, and Racer Ricky Brabec. The purpose was to cover all things current in the world of off-road desert racing.

Lasting over two hours, the Facebook Live video has garnered over 47,000 views and stimulated 412 comments. It can also be viewed on the Fishgistics Youtube channel.

Austin “Fish” Farner, a well-known figure in the world of desert racing, created his brand and social channel FishGistics as a platform to house breaking news during races. The Facebook Page ‘About’ description reads “FishGistics is your one stop for all desert racing info, pictures, and videos.” In reality, Fishgistics does live event coverage during significant desert racing events while providing a valuable service of logistics, tracking, and communications for racer clients.

Fishgistics providing race day updates and commentary to his viewers.

We checked in with Austin to see how he came up with the idea of hosting the webinar. “I came up with the idea while drinking a few White Claws,” he said.  “I thought it would be cool if we got a bunch of the main people together and had an open discussion. No set plan or script. Since the show, the feedback has been tremendous and generated much more hype than any other show we have ever done. Everyone seems super stoked that it happened, and honestly, even some haters told me we did a good job!”

“I believe that it is the first time ever that the promoters of the main series came together and had a discussion like that,” continued Austin. “It’s definitely the first time it’s ever been public.”

Austin believes that The State Of Offroad Racing will jumpstart the conversation on how promoters can join forces and keep the motorsport alive. “My hope, by doing the show, was to get a discussion going between the main desert racing promoters to see if they can all work together on several things that would just make racing better for everyone,” he said. “For example, schedules, rules to match between series, and maybe even get one big badass combined stage race similar to the Dakar, but here in the US and into Baja!”

As the crow flies, the distance from Cabo to Reno is not 5,000 miles, but a desert racing course could be designed to achieve the mileage.

“Also, I would like to apologize to the series I wasn’t able to have on the show and other builders and racers that were not included,” he continued. “We only had so much time to work with and to prepare the show ahead of time. The shorter format couldn’t fit everyone in. But we love them all.“

From the sound of it, we are likely to see more of these collaborations come together. The future of off-road racing seems vibrant and alive. Off Road Xtreme thinks the concept of a possible mega race crossing international borders sounds amazing! The potential collaboration of an off-road, multi-series championship would be a momentous future goal as well.