Marcellus is running the old #2 Miller colors.
Posted on 12/09/2008 10:53:03 AM PST by BurbankKarl
Once-unstoppable Nascar is hitting a wall as its fan base erodes, race attendance declines, TV ratings slip, the auto industry implodes and economically stressed marketers slam the brakes on sponsorships. The pileup is so big that Nascar, long held up as the gold standard in sports marketing due to its followers -- fiercely loyal to the sport and its sponsoring brands -- had to lay off 1,000 employees and is fretting over whether it could actually lose money next year.
CEO Brian France, speaking last week in New York at its big year-end promotional event, Champions Week, said Nascar won't see increased sponsorship revenue in 2009 -- a seemingly unthinkable turn of events for a sport that added $150 million in sponsorship dollars last year. "Next year, we will not obviously make that kind of a gain," he warned, then added, "The question is, are we going to back up?"
Of Nascar's 42 full-time drivers, 12 currently do not have primary sponsors for the 2009 season, which begins in less than 10 weeks with the Daytona 500. Primary sponsors pay $18 million to $20 million to be featured as the main logo for all 38 races on a driver's car, such as DuPont does with Jeff Gordon. Running nearly a third of its cars without a major sponsor is a huge problem, since under its team business model, at least 75% of the budget comes from sponsors.
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Old friends And two Nascar marketing staples have left. Eastman Kodak ended a 22-year relationship, while Sears Roebuck, hard hit by the economic downturn and anemic retail sales, decided to end its 13-year title sponsorship of the Craftsman Truck Series after this year.
(Excerpt) Read more at adage.com ...
Marcellus is running the old #2 Miller colors.
I definitely see this dropping of sponsors in NASCAR. My Son and My ex-wife are both Fans. As far as I am concerned seeing a bunch of cars go round and round on a track is just not very exciting.
But for the die-hard fans in the family I can see the signs of burnout. They don’t watch the races as much and usually look at the stats on Monday.
And as my son said the other day to me, “The amount of money being spent is obscene”.
It’ll be interesting to see how this ends up.
right on! NASCAR will be ok but they will have the same difficulty as other sporting events. At the awards banquet last Friday in New York, there was a lot of directives to support GM and the bailout. Hoping Toyota don’t become a series sponsor or goodbye it may be.
NASCAR is still a good advertising buy compared to other media outlets. This isn’t so much NASCAR has changed, as companies are cutting back in general.
In hard times, compaies look for areas to cut costs. For some reason, the dumber CEOs think marketing is a good place to start cutting costs. When sales slip, that is the time you need to increase your marketing efforts.
Can you imagine a race car with government departments’ logos all over it?.........
Damn straight. I won't watch the races at the fuel mileage tracks. BORING.
So the current economy and state of the car mfgrs is irrelevant to this discussion?
NFL next?...................NEVER!!!!!!!!.........
The Fan Base is the South and they left us behind for the NE and the West.
But maybe this is a good thing in a way, who knows? The drivers can go back to the days of using regular automobiles and souping them up. Or maybe building Electric Cars and racing them? Now THAT would be cool . . . no more “can they make it on the gas left in the tank” to “can they make it on a dead battery?”
Craftsman Truck Series is a real loss, though.
(And you know, Craftsman is the ONLY tool maker I could find that makes a lightweight drill. Those battery ones are too heavy for me [older woman, think Aunt Bea on Andy Griffith] and I wanted a plug in type. Found it at KMart.)
in the correction, that number comes from teams, sponsors, lounge lizards, etc.
who knows how accurate it is.
What I am concerned about more than NASCAR is the survival of the local short tracks. We had to drop our late model 2 years ago due to lack of sponsorship. Too expensive to run out of pocket any more. Used to be a hobby that was fun. The money took the fun out of the sport.
Economy is relevant as much it is relevant to the NFL. Yes, it hurts the industry.
However, the problems of Nascar run deeper than the economy. It has to do with the fact that the business is not run for the benefit of the entire industry. It is run for the benefit of one family.
In the NFL the business is organized around the 32 teams and their owners and also the players. Costs and profits are both spread around.
In NASCAR the France family determines single handedly who makes money and who does not. So you can go and spend a few hundred million dollars putting up a racetrack and be promised a second race but then never be given one.
There hasn’t been any “racing” done on a NASCAR track in close to 10 years.
Could it be all those left turns. Maybe the drama
of the left turns has been solved.
I like racing but I have never understood NASCAR’s appeal.
1) A race car with a Steetcar body. Yawn
2) A race without corner to corner turns. Yawn
3) Engines should be VISIBLE, so we can laugh at your mechanics as we see it disintegrate. Hehe
I used to go to SCCA racing events. (now that’s racing.)
Well, I for one have to admit that NASCAR isn’t the same anymore. I don’t like the way they have redone things and changed the rules. I also don’t like the fact that drivers don’t stay with teams any longer.... they are all over the place. Back when Dale Sr. drove, I hardly missed a race... now I hardly watch one.
I am sure that Daytona will do just fine, however!
How long until they ask for a bailout?
Fox News announcing NFL will lay off 10% of its league office staff - about 150 jobs. This is jobs at the league HQ itself, NFL Films, and their media office in LA.
Drivers have been hopping teams for 50+ years!
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