Good News York by Growth Mode Content - GNY EP.199 | feat. Badger from the Syracuse Nationals

Episode Date: July 13, 2026

Badger Previews Syracuse Nationals 2026: Horsepower After Hours, 7,000 Cars, and Family Fun On Good News York, host interviews Brian “Badger,” operations manager for the Syracuse Nationals, described as the largest car show in the Northeast, held July 16–18 at the New York State Fairgrounds. Badger outlined extensive week-of setup logistics involving trailers, tents, generators, electricians, and coordination with a small 6–7 person core team supported by volunteers, local car clubs, and security. He previewed Thursday’s “Horsepower After Hours” kickoff party with $5 after 5 admission, lowrider exhibitions, modern muscle cars on a dyno with Mobile Dyno Masters, a stereo competition, Nitro Row cars, and live music from 80s/90s cover band The Arcade (7:30–9:00). The weekend includes the Wall of Death, celebrity appearances (Russ Bros, Candy Clark), over 7,000 cars, about 90,000 attendees, and family-friendly policies; tickets and info are at syracusenationals.com, with camping at capacity. 00:00 Thursday Night Kickoff 00:24 Meet Badger 00:57 Nationals Dates and Venue 01:23 Behind the Scenes Setup 02:55 What to Expect This Year 04:23 How Big Is It 05:27 Families and Future Fans 06:30 Must See Cars and Displays 08:07 Tickets Registration and Camping 09:19 Wrap Up and Studio Outro

Thursday night come out. Five bucks at the gate to get in. We got low rider exhibition going on, cars hopping, three-wheel motion. We got modern muscle cars on the dino, doing the dino with mobile dino masters. We got a stereo competition. We got the arcade playing one of CNY's best 80s and 90s cover band. They're playing from 730 to 9. It's just a full-on party.

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Welcome to Good News York. Today, my guest is Badger. Badger, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me back, man. Absolutely. Go ahead and introduce yourself for those of you. So my name is Brian Badger.

Everyone calls me Badger, but I am the operations manager for the Syracuse Nationals, the largest car show in the Northeast. We also do the cavalcade of cars. We also have a brand new truck show that's coming up after the Syracuse Nationals at Oswego Speedway. So we do a lot of things car-related, a lot of events stuff in the Syracuse and Central New York area in general. Awesome. Cool.

Yeah. So tell me about Nationals. that it's coming up. It is coming up a lot faster than I wanted to. I could use a couple more days of getting ready, but we're going to make it happen. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, July 16th, 17th, and 18th. This week, if you're watching this right now,

it's this week at the New York State Fairgrounds, 375 acres, and we use every inch of it, man. Cool. Awesome. You've told us that you've been working some long hours, some long days. Can you tell me what you've been working on? What are you working on to get everything Well, you know, a lot of people just, you know, it's the same thing like with the concert world, right?

Even the car show world. People show up and everything's there and everything's done and they experience it, but maybe not understand how every each little piece in part had to get there. So starting on Monday this past Monday, the 6th, we start getting a verdai trailers dropped off. Tents start coming in, excuse me, port of potty's, you know, things like that, office trailers, campers. all kinds of operational stuff. I'm working with the state fair to have them drop off things that we need equipment and stuff that we need heavy equipment's coming in for us to be able to move stuff around on site. So it's been a full week of accepting deliveries, putting things in place, getting stuff parked where it should be, getting generators in place,

so power can get hooked up, working with electricians. It's a lot. It takes a lot of coordination from our very small team, but very talented team. But then we lean heavily on the folks at the New York State. fairgrounds. They are, they really, you know, help us out a lot. For sure. Well, thank you for making the time to come down here and film this. I appreciate that. Yeah, yeah, I'm happy to be here. This is my second time here and I, you know, I feel like an OG now. I'm ready. I love it. Yeah, we're having our 200 episode parties in this week. I don't know if you're, you're probably busy working on. I'm a little

tied up, you know, but I'll watch. Totally cool. Totally cool. Beautiful. Cool. So what can people expect at the nationals this year? Well, of course we can expect families, cars, atmosphere, music, fun, right? I was just telling somebody this morning, the only thing we're missing is like Ringling Brothers Circus at this place. We got Thursday night we're doing a horsepower after hours. So we're staying open late on Thursday for the kickoff party. It's going to be $5 after five, right? So we take into consideration most of the people in the CNY area, they're working on Thursday, right? Don't worry about it. Come out Friday, Thursday night come out.

Five bucks at the gate to get in. We got low rider exhibition going on. Cars hopping, three-wheel motion. We got modern muscle cars on the dino, doing the dino with mobile dino masters. We got a stereo competition. We got the arcade playing one of CNY's best 80s and 90s cover band. They're playing from 730 to 9.

It's just a full-on party. Nitro row cars are firing up. So it's going to be awesome, man. Wow. No, that sounds really cool. You guys got a lot. I mean, that's a ton of things. That was like five different things.

Yeah, and that's just between five and nine p.m. on Thursday night, you know? I mean, we have the Wall of Death coming back this year for the whole run. We have the Russ Bros. coming for celebrities, you know, celebrity appearance all three days. We got Georgia. We got Candy and Chrome. We got Candy Clark from American Graffiti. We have just nonstop action all weekend long.

And, you know, we have over 7,000 cars coming to, to, Show us what they got. Wow. So that was my next question is how big is the event, right? 7,000 cars. How many people are you expecting to get at this? We, realistic numbers we get about total throughout the three days, 90,000 people on the grounds.

Wow. Yeah. That's crazy. I mean, how big is the staff to do with 90,000 people? Well, our staff is six to seven people. What we do lean heavily a lot on volunteers and part-time staff that come in just for this and they've been doing it for a long time with us so they know. But, you know, anywhere from security to volunteers,

a lot of the local car clubs in the area, they volunteer their time to come to the show and they work in a certain area and either check in people here or get stuff going here, you know, for three, four hours at a time. And then, you know, they switch out. But we have, you know, an immense support system of people helping us to get this done.

That's great. Wonderful. Well, cool. Where are you trying to grow? Where are you trying to expand your audience? You know, are you trying to get just any more, more of anybody to come through or more families, more kids? What are you trying to grow? Obviously, the family element's always huge, right? Kids 12 and under are free. Kids 16 and under are free if they're riding in a show car. So if you're coming in with dad in his show car, you're in the back seat, mom and dad, you're in for free, 16 and under, right? We always want to, we always want to focus on families because we care about our own families. and we care about the families of other people. And let's be honest, the younger kids, the younger people

are going to be the ones who take this show to the next level in another 10, 15, 20 years, right? So, yeah, obviously we want to cater to those people to gain their interest, you know, quickly and have them say, Mom, can we go back to the car show? Can we go back to the car show, right? The car show's got to last. And, you know, we need younger people to be involved,

for sure. Yeah, I think that's a good outlook, right? It's a good long-term mindset, right? Right. Beautiful. Very good. Personally, is there any specific vehicle that, like, you're like, wow, this car was really cool. It's going to be awesome. I'm looking forward to it being on display this weekend. Anything that you've seen so far that you're like, this is going to be awesome. That's so hard to, I mean, it's so hard to pick that, man. There's a ton of stuff. There's a lot of cool things coming to the signature showcase, which is inside our Expo building, Our Winfield display cars, our Winfield Select 6 cars are always amazing. You know, our lowrider building, you know, it's going to have a ton of top tier low riders and cars with chrome and gold and engraving and hydraulics and, you know, crazy custom interiors and crazy custom paint jobs.

All the hot rods, all the pro street cars, the C10 Chevy trucks, a square body trucks. We have a huge C-10 invasion. It's like, I can't pick just one, you know? Sure. Yeah, no, that's cool. That's exciting. I love it. The way you talk about this, it's like a kid in a candy store, right?

Yeah, it's, uh, it's hard to explain, man, but it's like you really, you know, it really, you know, you absorb it, you know, and it becomes like a part of you. You know, we work so hard all year long. This is, this is Super Bowl weekend, right? This is game seven of the World Series is Thursday. You know, so this is it. And so everything, you know, all our playoff games, all our training, all our coaching, you know what I mean? All our practice is it comes down to game day this weekend.

And, you know, we're just excited for it. Beautiful. Where can people get tickets? How can they find out more? www. www.sachuse Nationals.com. Tickets are online. Right now they are $20 online pre-sale.

They will go up at the gate, like most events. all the infos there, Syracuse Nationals.com, tickets, car show registrations. You can come to the fairgrounds. You can register your car on site in person at the registration tent. If you haven't done that yet, you don't have to do it online. Camping is at capacity. So, you know, we don't want people showing up randomly with campers saying, hey, I'm looking for a campsite. But everything is at Syracuse Nationals.com.

It's all there. We'll be there. How exciting. How many people are camping there this weekend? I think we have just around 600 camping spaces, and we're at capacity. So, you know, I mean, if each camper has two, three people or a family of five, there's going to be a lot of campers. My goodness. Wow.

Well, cool. Beautiful Badgers. Is there anything that you wanted to touch on that we didn't get a chance to talk about? No, not that I can think of. Just, you know, we're just looking forward to it. And this is what we've been waiting for. Beautiful. Well, thank you so much for coming back. We truly appreciate it. And thank you guys for watching.

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