Drennan 1
Thomas Drennan
Discourse Community
Dr. Griffin
April 23, 2013
Sponsorship in Motorsports
Racing has become a very popular sport worldwide. With more people wanting to
be involved in premier level racing, and the continuing of the struggling economy, the
need for sponsorships to fund weekly events is in great demand. The competitors need
the best equipment week in and week out to be able to compete at the highest levels. This
desire can range from any form of racing, from dirt bikes to stock cars. Stock cars are
more a term of the past. They were originally called stock cars because people would buy
them straight from the car dealership and alter them for racing competition. With the
amount of technology and new safety techniques that go in today’s racecars, it would be
hard to call them stock cars. Although, in recent years there has been a push to get the
cars to appear more like those that are on the showroom floor. The National Association
of Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) is the premier racing sanctioning body in the
United States. NASCAR teams are a very structured organization. An owner is allowed
to have up to four separate teams. These teams each have a different driver, crew, and
usually a different sponsor.
This series is one that is almost exclusively run on sponsorship money. The
weekly budget can run teams thousands of dollars to compete, and that does not even
Drennan 2
include building the car and getting it to the racetrack. This makes it near impossible for
an owner or operator to participate in the thirty six race season strictly out of pocket. It is
also a major problem for these race companies to find sponsors that are willing to pay the
upwards of forty million dollars it cost to have their name put on the car as the primary
sponsor. This struggle between race teams and businesses is only making the sport suffer.
It does not allow for the number of cars competing for a spot in the field every week to
grow. Over recent years we have seen less cars show up every week and there are
currently just enough or maybe a few extra for there to be a full field. The challenge
faced by teams to find sponsors willing to pay the money to advertise on the cars, may
force NASCAR to rethink some of the rules and bans they have implemented for
sponsors.
NASCAR has forced some companies to leave the sport, while rules and
regulations have led to other sponsors leaving the sport to avoid all of the headaches. It is
already hard enough for teams to find sponsors, now they are losing sponsors like
tobacco and liquor companies because NASCAR is trying to protect their image. Other
companies that are on the outside looking in are companies such as AT&T and Verizon.
This is because the cell phone provider Sprint has become the title sponsor of the series
and there is a conflict of interest between the companies. With many teams running
partial seasons trying to get a sponsor, and other teams running without sponsors at all, I
believe that NASCAR needs to loosen the reigns on some of the rules it has against
companies that sponsoring cars. If companies like tobacco and liquor companies as well
as cell phone providers want to come into the sport they should be allowed to, it is only
going to benefit the overall program.
Drennan 3
Many people believe that NASCAR needs to keep hard liquor companies away
from sponsoring events and specific cars. Hard liquor is something that had been rarely
advertised on national television, and NASCAR was following suit. There are several
beer companies, which advertise on racecars, but over the recent years there have not
been any hard liquor companies advertising. Chris Jenkins writes, “The policy stems
from NASCAR officials’ sensitivity to the stigma that hard liquor equals hard drinking.”
(Jenkins 1) NASCAR is believed to have some of the most loyal fans in sports. With that
being said, fans are loyal to the brands their favorite drivers represent. NASCAR has the
idea that if they allow hard liquor companies to advertise on the cars, the fans will drink
that product heavily. This could be very true, many people associate drinking alcohol
with attending racing events. Overall, NASCAR is trying to protect its image of being a
family venue.
Although NASCAR is trying to move from the previous conception people had of
the sport in its earlier history, where it was a sport surrounded by men and heavy
drinking, they have to realize all the potential money they could be missing out on. There
are several companies that at one point in time paid millions of dollars to advertise on
cars. Companies such as Jim Beam and Jack Daniel’s use to sponsor different cars, as
well as Crown Royal, which was a title sponsor of a different touring series affiliated
with NASCAR. With all of these sponsors being primary sponsors, they had to pay
millions of dollars to be put on the cars and series title. Now that they have been ban
from NASCAR teams are struggling to find new sponsors to fill this void. Also, the series
once known as the Crown Royal IROC series has since folded. This ban that was
implemented in the early 2000s has since been lifted, but we still have not seen a hard
Drennan 4
liquor company become a primary sponsor on a racecar. After being cut from NASCAR
completely there has been no real desire for these hard liquor companies to get back into
the sport. There are currently a plethora of teams running without sponsors or very
limited sponsorship. This could lead to the teams not being able to run a complete season,
or even being able to compete with the top competition in the sport. If the hard liquor
companies were not ban in the first place, we may see more of them in the sport today
and less cars struggling to find sponsorship. Alcohol is alcohol, either do not allow any of
it to be advertised in NASCAR or allow all of it to have a fair opportunity. There is too
much potential for the companies return on investment to completely exclude them.
Tobacco companies are other sponsors that have quickly vanished from
NASCAR. Winston was the title sponsor of the Cup series from the early 1970s until
2003. Many of the top series in NASCAR, which include the Cup and the Grand National
series, were flooded with different forms of tobacco sponsorships. There was anything
from cigarette companies to smokeless tobacco companies involved in sponsoring cars
and events. Over the years that they have been involved, tobacco companies have
pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the sport of auto racing. Tobacco companies
are what allowed for the sport of stock car racing to expand the way it did through the
late twentieth century. This was not a decision that was made completely by NASCAR,
but also came from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). For many teams this
would take a drastic amount of sponsorship away from them, not to mention the title
sponsor of the Cup series would now change. “Teams such as Baker-Curb Racing would
have a future that was less certain after losing primary sponsor Red Man tobacco.”
Drennan 5
(Ryan 1) The movement from tobacco-sponsored events is NASCARs attempt to try and
distance itself from being a “rural, rough-neck recreation.” (Woody 1)
The American public has been trying to change the outlook on tobacco now for
years. This has become a major task taken on trying to limit advertising everywhere from
stores to all different sporting events. There is a major problem with this though when it
comes to NASCAR. Tobacco companies were some of the largest spenders when it came
to sponsoring racing events. This was a great market for tobacco and gave them a great
return on investment. It was also huge for the competing teams. After new regulations
came into effect, teams such as Baker-Curb were forced to fold because of its lack of
sponsorship. There is no way for the complete decimation of tobacco advertising in the
American public. The use of tobacco is almost a way of life. People are going to continue
to use this whether there is advertising or not. Tobacco should be allowed to sponsor cars
and NASCAR events; these are multi-billion dollar profiting companies that are looking
to spend money in different area. Race teams are constantly looking for companies to
sponsor them. If they feel as if they do not want tobacco company names plastered all
over the car, they should still be able to be a secondary sponsor. The secondary sponsors
are still crucial to race teams, they just do not spend the money that primary sponsors do,
and therefore are a little less obvious on the car.
At the end of the tobacco era in NASCAR, there was a new beginning. Title
sponsorship moved from Winston to Nextel and later to Sprint. This would be the start of
the cell phone provider running the Cup series. The cell phone provider Cingular that was
bought out by AT&T had been the primary sponsor of the Richard Childress Racing
(RCR) number 31 driven by Jeff Burton and Robby Gordon. They had been the primary
Drennan 6
sponsor on this car from 2003 until the series would change to the Nextel Series in 2008.
The only way that current cell phone providers sponsor a car in the Cup Series would be
if they were already on a car before the time Nextel became the title sponsor of the series.
This was fine at the point in time but these companies, such as Cingular would be later
bought out by AT&T. “AT&T planned to shift from the Cingular name and logo to the
AT&T brand. To facilitate AT&T's rebranding efforts RCR submitted a new paint design
for its #31 racecar” (Hambrick, Marion E, and Anita M. Moorman. 54). With its new
acquisition, AT&T would want its name put on the side of the car instead of Cingular.
Now there was a problem because AT&T was not part of the company that was
grandfathered into the cell phone providers being allowed in the series.
These rules that NASCAR puts on the corporations that are trying to help the
sport to grow are ridiculous. This is a major market for companies such as AT&T that
want to have more publicity, but rather than be able to continue to sponsor a car that they
already had for years they are being pushed out of the sport. This is not as big as a
problem as maybe the tobacco or hard liquor companies because there are far fewer cell
phone providers, but nevertheless they are still companies that are trying to help keep
cars competing week in and week out.
Overall, NASCAR has begun to drive several companies out of the sport. This is
all in an effort to protect their image. Many people believe that auto racing is some sort of
hillbilly, redneck sport. When people think of racing they automatically think of drinking
and the use of tobacco products. These preconceived notions of what racing is can be
very true, but that’s what makes racing what it is. NASCAR is attempting to change its
demographics, so that it can appeal to a wider range of people, families included.
Drennan 7
NASCAR has implemented rules that have driven companies such as hard liquor,
tobacco and cell phone companies completely out of the sport. What they may not realize
is the amount of money that these companies brought to the sport. Race teams depended
on companies such as Jack Daniel’s, Jim Beam, Red Man, Longhorn, and AT&T to
sponsor cars for millions or even tens of millions of dollars. The sport could possibly not
just loose money because of the inflow of cash from these companies, but they could
loose money because of the loyal followers that these companies would bring to the
sport. There was a time when teams could bring several cars to the track every week
because there was such an enormous amount of sponsorship coming from all of these
different companies.
Present day with all these companies leaving the sport, NASCARs three top
touring series are barely competing weekly with a full field. There was once a time when
each race would send home several cars because the field was full. Now there are maybe
one or two cars that do not make the main event. This could be due to the fact of the
struggling economy, but it could also be due in large part to the rules that NASCAR has
implemented. Many companies may just not want to deal with all the trouble NASCAR
puts them through to have their name on the side of a car, so now they will spend their
sponsorship money at other venues. It’s time that NASCAR lets go of the tight grasp it
has on the economics of the competing teams. This could help revive the sport and bring
it back to the way it was twenty years ago.
Drennan 8
Works Cited
Chris, Jenkins. “NASCAR hard-liquor ban remains despite IROC deal.” USA Today
n.d.:Middle Search Plus. Web. 9 Apr. 2013.
Crain, Keith. “NASCAR Must Keep Liquor Out.” Automotive News 78.6090 (2004):
12.Small Business Reference Center. Web. 9 Apr. 2013.
Hambrick. Marion E., and Anita M. Moorman. “NASCAR Puts The Brakes On AT&T:
Sponsorship Conflicts Of Interest And Contractual Rights.” Sports Marketing
Quaterly17.1 (2008): 54-56. SportDiscus with Full Text. Web. 9 Apr. 2013.
Nate, Ryan. “Tobacco era in NASCAR ending.” USA Today (Arlington, VA) 02 June
2010: Newsbank, Web. 9 Apr. 2013.
Woody, Larry. “The End Of Tobacco Road.” Auto Racing Digest 32.1 (2004): 4651.SPORTDiscus with Full Text. Web. 9 Apr. 2013.