The news had been bleak about AMA Superbike racing. One journalist even asked if we were witnessing the death of motorcycle road racing in America. But I came away from Daytona 2014 with an optimistic feeling about the future of the sport.

The crowd looked up quite a bit from last year. Granted 2013 was a miserable turnout, but I mean 2014 was a solid Bike Week in terms of attendance. The weather was great and a lot of people just had to get out of the nasty winter we suffered this year up north.

You can’t ask for a better star for the sport than Danny Eslick. The dude has personality in spades. He’s a throwback to the racers of the 1960s’ and ‘70s. Sure he loves to knock down a few brewskies,  but on raceday he’s ready to hammer down on the racetrack.

Superbike has low numbers in term of strong teams this year, but it’s going to be a good four-way battle between the Yamaha and Yosh guys.

Daytona SportBike this season is in a word – Awesome. I mean I cannot wait to watch the next race, so many good riders and teams in the series; this after Cameron Beaubier’s dominance sucked the life out the championship last season.

By the way, that’s going to happen in SuperSport this year. No one is going to touch Corey Alexander. Please move up to DSB where you belong Corey!

And the Harley XR1200 racing is as usual, super fun to watch.

Laguna was added to the schedule so the series has a West Coast Race. It’s all good.

But the very best and I mean very, very best thing to happen was the introduction of www.fanschoice.tv. Now everyone worldwide can watch the races on demand. You can watch the races on your tablet or smart phone even if you’re out and about. And sure, the production values aren’t up to network standards, but it was pretty darn good for the first time out. It will get better and it’s wall to wall coverage.

I think this is revolutionary. Mark my words – we will look back on web-based TV as turning point for the series. Soon everyone will have TVs that live stream from the web and networks will largely become irrelevant.

So I say to the naysayers, motorcycle road racing in America is going to be fine. Yes it’s been a little shaky of late, but it looks like the fever may finally be breaking.