IMO, competition for racers is the problem. As the season progresses, racers have a lot of choice. If a promoter goes early, and the earlier the better, the competition with other races is less and there is no track racing. If one looks at the NorCal Calendar, it has a lot of races that compete with each other. One of my favorite races was the Berkeley Team Time Trial. Two years ago that race was canceled due to low pre-registration and has not returned. It could not compete with the crits and road races that were put on the same weekend.