« The New York Yankees have spent so much money this off season they could have… | Main | New Year’s Resolutions: Racing and Otherwise »
NASCAR seeking sponsors while teams are dying
By admin | December 28, 2008
By Richard Allen
I read a story in the Sports Business Journal the other day which pointed out that NASCAR will be entering 2009 with perhaps as many as ten fewer official partners than they have had in years past. This year in particular there are openings in four major areas of corporate partnerships with the sanctioning body. Each of these sponsorships have typically netted NASCAR millions of dollars each per year.
Home Depot, Enterprise Rent-a-car, Dominos Pizza and Kodak each failed to renew their agreements with NASCAR and thus left a void in each of those business categories when it comes to official partnerships.
This story made me more than a little angry. NASCAR apparently has a staff of people out looking for replacements for these companies so they can rake in more cash while at the same time the teams who actually compete in the sport are dying for lack of sponsorship.
Venerable teams such as Petty Enterprises and Wood Brothers Racing are on the verge of extinction because of the expense of racing.
NASCAR has created an environment which causes teams to spend millions to survive and hope to be competitive. Yet the sanctioning body seems more worried about making sure all of their billboard space is filled while at the same time garage doors all over the Charlotte area close. The Car of Tomorrow, an exhausting schedule and a variety of other factors have driven costs so high that even the most powerful teams in the sport are in a position of having to layoff employees.
Teams, not corporate partners, are the life blood of the sport. NASCAR should have as its top priority helping its teams find backers, and then not running those sponsors off when the sanctioning body itself signs a new agreement with some company and grants said company exclusivity.
After their teams are taken care of, the folks in Daytona Beach can worry about what home improvement warehouse to shop in, what pizza to eat, where to rent a car and the type of camera to use.
What NASCAR is doing seems as strange as a person finding out he has a serious internal disease and deciding the best way to take care of it is to go to the mall and buy new clothing so he will look nice rather than getting the medicine he needs.
I know it costs a lot to run the business NASCAR runs and I know corporate partners are necessary. However, those partners are not more necessary than having cars on the track. Fans are not going to buy tickets to come look at all the pretty billboards that ring a facility with no cars going around it.
What is NASCAR going to tell its remaining corporate partners this season when only 35-36 cars show up to race in front of a half empty grandstand somewhere?
NASCAR needs corporate partners. But, it needs healthy teams more. In times such as these, priorities are very important.
Richard Allen is a member of the National Motorsports Press Association. His weekly column appears in The Mountain Press every Wednesday
Topics: Articles |
December 28th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
empty seats at places like Daytona, Talladega and Bristol says all that needs to be said about Na$car’s priorities.
December 29th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Brian France has always worried much more about padding his wallet than what happens on the track. AT&T is being forced out of sponsoring a car because of Nascar’s corporate ‘partners’. After teams have had to spend millions of dollars trying to make the COT raceable (notice that Nascar left that expense up to the teams, even in the early stages), and trying to keep up with Nascar’s arbitrary team ‘limits’, they have left little to support what is the life blood of the sport….the actual race teams.
December 29th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
I wonder if NASCAR knows that a lot of people including me won’t buy things that have nascar writin on them
December 29th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Hey, lately the racing has been so bad I think I might rather pay to look at some pretty billboards. Your article is right on point, though. Well written.
December 29th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Nascar has never gotten it! The history means nothing, the teams mean nothing and the fans sure mean nothing. To be in competition with the teams for the same sponsor dollars is turning into suicide for them and they are oblivious to it.
France had it all wrong when he told the Elliotts that he wasn’t going to allow them to stink up the show. Nascar has stunk up its own show with corporate greed and the suffering has just begun. The worst part is how their supporters, the teams and fans, are going to suffer for it as well.
December 29th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
The problem is the same as it is with all CEO’s, screw everyone while lining their pockets.
This stupid parity thing is ruining racing, let’s go back to who can make the car go fastest wins the Damn race.
December 29th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
NASCAR has SUCKED for 5+ years!!!
Who’s been in charge???
December 29th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
One word describes this…Greed.
I can proudly say that I did what I could to keep a team sponsor from becoming a Nascar partner. Needless to say, I have some enemies in New York City, if they’re still employed there or even remember.
December 29th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Just read Smokey Yunick’s book. He has been right about the France family and Nascar from the beginning.
December 29th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
I’ve been flogging this particular horse for years. NA$CAR has always treated it’s owners like crap. The owners have made the France family Billionaires, apparently it’s not enough.
December 30th, 2008 at 8:41 am
NASCAR’s attitude is, was, and will always be that no team is important than the sport. If a team fails, another will take their place. But now, with the soft economy and fewer sponsors…
NASCAR has stolen sponsors from teams before; they are more concerned with their own survival. Though there have been many suggestions, nobody truly thinks that they’ll actually help teams financially or with sponsor help.
December 30th, 2008 at 9:11 am
Once upon a time to win on Sunday meant sell more cars, of that make, on Monday! This doesn’t happen anymore!!
Goodbye Detroit!! If they don’t get out of racing on their own, Congress will act sooner than later on this situation, if the car makers want more cash!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
JD
December 31st, 2008 at 10:28 pm
I was a true die hard NASCAR fan right up to the point when they signed their first big TV contract and dumped ESPN. At that point it seems that they shunned tracks like North Wilksboro (roots) and embraced cookie cutter tracks like Vegas, Texas and”Chicagoland” ($). Since then NASCAR has been over marketed, over hyped and over exposed.
Now I’d rather spend a Sunday afternoon watching a baseball game!
January 8th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Like you all said, it is no longer about the fans it’s about the money.. France made it perfectly clear in one of his articales where he said he went after Toyota to bring more money into Nascar and now says he made a good move because Toyota will support him through these tought times. Doesn’t anyone realize that since Toyota came on with their cheating and stealing and with DW lining his pockets with money, that the fans want an American race. If you wonder why this country is in so much trouble look in your drive and if you see a foreign car, you are now part of the problem
If you like Toyota move to Japan and buy all you want but don’t try and push them on us..I read today another new team is going with Toyota…Soon there will be 43 Toyotas going around the track and nothing but non americans watching them. I’m done with Nascar…