NASCAR has been taking a slight beating these days because of the nasty little event being referred to as spingate, where Michael Waltrip Racing had one car seemingly spin intentionally while another car pitted way out of sequence, to help various factors of the outcome of the driver points standings at the race at Richmond a few weeks back.
NASCAR has been handing out penalties and making adjustments on the fly, with the 12, now 13 contenders for the Chase for the Cup, due to these events. And MWR has lost NAPA as a sponsor.
I was asked the other weekend why some of the sponsors are still on the cars of the other participants of the various teams that are getting caught (up) in this scenario, and the blatant answer is they don't care.
But to be honest, it takes certain obligatory events to create an "out" for a sponsor who has signed a contract with a team that's worth around $10-$30 million a year.
And these days, NASCAR is taking it hard on the nose of this cheating environment.
But let's be honest, who doesn't cheat? Where the term cheat could be creatively implied from various actions.
Most sports have had some kind of issue or situation in the past that has caught the media's attention. From video taping the opposing team, to jacking up with performance enhancing drugs, to jockeys hauling back hard on the reigns of a horse to keep it from leaping out in front of the pack at the finish line.
We've seen it all and this is not a new event in the world of sports.
At the moment, it's the biggest scandal going on in the sports world and in some cases, getting some (undue) attention.
The problem I'm having, well, having for, MWR, is that they risked two incredibly great sponsors of the sport for this endgame of theirs that included publicly decrying in various methods that their stunt worked. And that the stunt was as blatant as it was.
NAPA's had enough. They're bailing in the middle of a lucrative contract with MWR. (Yes, contracts have clauses that address these kinds of special moments, giving sponsors an out when their client does dumb shit.)
I wish to apologize to NAPA and 5-Hour Energy. This Waltrip thing is not exemplary behavior of NASCAR. Sure, teams find themselves in the grey area from time to time, but these flagrant bonehead moves are not the common practice in the sport. (...that I know of.)
Please, don't leave the sport of NASCAR. Other teams who are in the thick of good, near-honest competition could use your $10-30 million contracts to keep afloat. Please find other worthy drivers of your funding to stay around.
That would be appreciated and it would let the fans know it's the sport you support and not just a specific driver. Though I must say, you have a lot of marketing out there that you're being forced to probably pull to minimize your expsoure to this crap Waltrip pulled.
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Showing posts with label sponsors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sponsors. Show all posts
Friday, September 20, 2013
Monday, January 28, 2013
5-Hour Energy Loved Clint Bowyer's Dash for Gordon
Sponsors love exposure. And 5-hour Energy got a ton of it last November at Phoenix, when Clint Bowyer got ticked and mustered up a 1k dash of frustration, looking for Jeff Gordon.
And his sponsor, plastered all over the front and back of the uniform, loved it. So many folks took to the video channels and over-layed the telecast "run for the Gordon" with the 5-Hour Energy theme, and the sponsor themselves, said,
["It was the best commercial for us I've ever seen," Rise Meguiar, 5-Hour Energy vice president of sales, said with a laugh. "The company loved it. We played it over and over and over again. We even put it on our website. There were some YouTube things that fans did with it, too. We just loved it."]
Saddled in between serious sponsors, the team behind the energy drink says they feel vindicated to be there, amongst some of the biggest power-house marketers in the market.
And NASCAR fans are some of the more loyal sports fans out there.
And what 5-Hour gets out of their NASCAR relationship, over say, the NFL, reports Marty Smith of ESPN, is that they get "...direct marketing to consumers, and for retailers."
If you're curious, the rest of Smith's article is pretty informative when it comes to the marketing angle of the sport. But it was also a tickle to be reminded of that momentous dash by Clint...
And his sponsor, plastered all over the front and back of the uniform, loved it. So many folks took to the video channels and over-layed the telecast "run for the Gordon" with the 5-Hour Energy theme, and the sponsor themselves, said,
["It was the best commercial for us I've ever seen," Rise Meguiar, 5-Hour Energy vice president of sales, said with a laugh. "The company loved it. We played it over and over and over again. We even put it on our website. There were some YouTube things that fans did with it, too. We just loved it."]
Saddled in between serious sponsors, the team behind the energy drink says they feel vindicated to be there, amongst some of the biggest power-house marketers in the market.
And NASCAR fans are some of the more loyal sports fans out there.
And what 5-Hour gets out of their NASCAR relationship, over say, the NFL, reports Marty Smith of ESPN, is that they get "...direct marketing to consumers, and for retailers."
If you're curious, the rest of Smith's article is pretty informative when it comes to the marketing angle of the sport. But it was also a tickle to be reminded of that momentous dash by Clint...
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Sad State of Affairs When the 4th Place Driver Has No Sponsors
I was just listening to The Morning Drive on SiriusXM radio and they were chatting up Trevor Bayne. Trevor Bayne is 19 points out of first place in the driver standings of the NASCAR Nationwide Series and he won't be able to race in this weekend's NNS event at Bristol, the Ford EcoBoost 300, because his team ran out of sponsor money.
The fourth place team has no funding to continue.
It's a shame that that a top contender in the series has to park it because of lack of funds, but the gritty reality of it is that this sport, at any level, is expensive to run in and this part of NASCAR, the Nationwide Series, apparently isn't big enough to draw in the money at this stage of the game.
Trevor said in the radio interview that he's preparing himself and getting ready as if he's going to run the Bristol race this weekend, but him and his team are still fishing for running funds.
He pointed out how important his entire run is each day, because when a sponsor interviews a driver, they want to know about all aspects of a race, not just the end result of the day. He's very aware of needing to look good to attract the money. But it has me wondering how sponsors really view the NNS aspect of NASCAR when the 4th place team can't find money.
And along with Trevor, Kenny Wallace will be out of money in a race or two also. The economy is still trying to recover and no one has excess advertising funds.
Trevor Bayne came to the limelight last year when he ended up winning the Daytona 500. With only 20 cars on the lead lap and having survived incidents that took out Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski, Greg Biffle, Matt Kesneth, Dale Earnhardt Jr and the like, he mustered an excellent drafting posture and found himself pushed to the win by Carl Edwards, in the No. 21 Motorcraft Ford from the Woods Brothers.
It was a popular win, but his team couldn't rest on their laurels and has had to make ends meet since then. Now, in all likelihood, Trevor Bayne will have to watch the race rather than be in it.
Of course he said, with 3 easy payments of...
He has a great attitude on the radio and I wish him luck, but admittedly, each NNS race cost around $100k per team. I just don't have that in my back pocket. And if I did and I sent Trevor a check, my wife would probably kill me!
--
The fourth place team has no funding to continue.
It's a shame that that a top contender in the series has to park it because of lack of funds, but the gritty reality of it is that this sport, at any level, is expensive to run in and this part of NASCAR, the Nationwide Series, apparently isn't big enough to draw in the money at this stage of the game.
Trevor said in the radio interview that he's preparing himself and getting ready as if he's going to run the Bristol race this weekend, but him and his team are still fishing for running funds.
He pointed out how important his entire run is each day, because when a sponsor interviews a driver, they want to know about all aspects of a race, not just the end result of the day. He's very aware of needing to look good to attract the money. But it has me wondering how sponsors really view the NNS aspect of NASCAR when the 4th place team can't find money.
And along with Trevor, Kenny Wallace will be out of money in a race or two also. The economy is still trying to recover and no one has excess advertising funds.
Trevor Bayne came to the limelight last year when he ended up winning the Daytona 500. With only 20 cars on the lead lap and having survived incidents that took out Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski, Greg Biffle, Matt Kesneth, Dale Earnhardt Jr and the like, he mustered an excellent drafting posture and found himself pushed to the win by Carl Edwards, in the No. 21 Motorcraft Ford from the Woods Brothers.
It was a popular win, but his team couldn't rest on their laurels and has had to make ends meet since then. Now, in all likelihood, Trevor Bayne will have to watch the race rather than be in it.
Of course he said, with 3 easy payments of...
He has a great attitude on the radio and I wish him luck, but admittedly, each NNS race cost around $100k per team. I just don't have that in my back pocket. And if I did and I sent Trevor a check, my wife would probably kill me!
--
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
How much Impact can an Economic Downturn have on NASCAR?
Tom Bowles of Sports Illustrated notes that with several ominous reports about the economy in recent weeks, many Americans are on the lookout for a possible recession. And in the sports world, there's no one keeping a keener watch then a handful of elite NASCAR owners.
The economy is a concern, because periods of economic downturn tend to affect NASCAR teams more than most; after all, it's the multimillion-dollar advertising budgets of primary sponsors that allow this sport to run in the first place.
Read the entire article over at Sports Illustrated.
The economy is a concern, because periods of economic downturn tend to affect NASCAR teams more than most; after all, it's the multimillion-dollar advertising budgets of primary sponsors that allow this sport to run in the first place.
Read the entire article over at Sports Illustrated.
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