Navy Cancels as a NASCAR Sponsor; With This Economy, Who's Next?

The United States Navy just announced that after this 2008 racing season, they will no longer sponsor NASCAR's Number 88 Nationwide Series car, which is owned by Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and driven by Brad Keselowski. The sponsorship is probably worth between $3 and $4 million a year. (Jeff Gordon leads the pack in his Dupont Chevrolet).

The Navy seems to be getting their money's worth as these things are measured in motor racing; Keselowski is second place in points in the Nationwide Series halfway through the season and has a good shot at the winning the series' championship. Sponsors with teams and drivers producing that kind of record usually don't cancel their advertising.

The Pentagon is convinced that NASCAR delivers one of their most dependable pools of potential recruits; fresh meat, as it were. Many of NASCAR's top drivers and teams over the years have carried sponsorships from the Navy, Army, Air Force, Coast Guard, National Guard, Marines and, yes, even the US Border Patrol. The only one missing is Homeland Security. (This artwork depicts plans for NASCAR's opening-in-2010 Hall of Fame in Charlotte, North Carolina.)

In the world of NASCAR, and for sports sponsorships in general, this cancellation is big, definitely unwelcome news. Even bigger are the implications for the many teams supported by the tens, perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars in total which flows every year from the US military to auto racing, with NASCAR generally their sport of choice. (This guy climbed Mt. Everest, and using a satellite phone from his base camp, called NASCAR headquarters; NASCAR delivered to him, by helicopter and just two days later, a NASCAR flag which he took to the top of the mountain.)

There's more than one irony at work here; most professional racers, in NASCAR and other series, because of the dedication their sports demand during their teenage years, have no military experience. Lewis Hamilton, the British driver who is leading (as I write this) in the championship points of what many consider the pinnacle of motor racing, the Formula One series, began racing go-karts, and not the kind most Americans think of when they hear the term, at the age of eight. These karts are fast, sophisticated racing machines, not of the old-lawn-mower-engine-on-a-home-built-chassis-type. At ten, he met Ron Dennis, head of the traditional powerhouse McLaren-Mercedes F1 team, and at 13 he signed contract with Dennis. Hamilton is also the first black race car driver to ever enjoy such worldwide prominence. NASCAR officials publicly claim they'd like to see minorities excel in their sport, but that's for another posting. We promise to get to that topic among many others in this racing series, from the dependably christian invocation and military pageantry before each race to NASCAR not having any drug policy and more.

The Nationwide Series, formerly the Busch Series (which was named for the heavy-spending beer), is NASCAR's AAA Division, the last rung on the ladder up before a driver is skilled enough to enter the top-flight Sprint Cup, where the big money and fan adulation is found. (Here's the NASCAR racing Camry. Toyota is now in all three of NASCAR's professional series, Sprint Cup, Nationwide Series and Sears Craftsman Truck Series, and they are nearly dominating each of those series.)

An occasionally competitive four-car Sprint Cup team will need somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 to $50 million a year in basic sponsorship dollars, spread out over the fewest number of sponsors as possible.Top-echelon Sprint Cup teams may have as many as 200 or more people working full-time in the spotless, high-tech facilities where the cars are built and maintained. That's in addition to the 30-or-more people who travel with the race cars via private plane or in one of the two-or-more gigantic team tractor-trailers emblazoned with the names of the drivers and sponsors. They go to more than 35 races over the course of the season, which starts in February with the Daytona 500 and ends in mid-November at a track outside Miami, FL. Many of the races and the entire season is entirely too long. Grist for yet another posting. (A happy family of NASCAR fans pose with several millions dollars-worth of race car and trailer; note the sponsorship.)

Roush Fenway Racing, one of the Sprint Cup's top teams, recently re-signed driver Carl Edwards to a three-year contract with insurance giant Aflac providing the financing for Edwards and other team costs. News reports say the deal is close to $78 million. Edwards, a talented driver, is a standard-issue All-American-type with a square jaw that gives Gary Cooper a run for his money. He does somersaults off his car when he wins, much to the consternation of his team owners, who don't want their golden goose injured. Edwards also flies his own jet from race to race and says things like, "That's real neat!" during interviews. Where do they find these guys? (Another NASCAR fan expresses his support for this hard liquor sponsor.)

Comments

[SteveParker]

Thanks for the comment ... Please tell your friends that "we're 24/7!" We're a "cars-everything" Blog but enjoy dissecting all racing series, from F1 to German Touring Cars to NASCAR and drag racing and motorcycles, too. If there's an engine involved, we'll talk about it here.
And appreciate your comment about our being in the 'entertainment' area (at least sometimes). We told the folks who run this place that it'd be hard, almost impossible, to pigeon-hole us in any category, and they're starting to find that out. Maybe they should just start a cars section, like print newspapers have ... Definitely something to think about.
You're right about their ratings going up; in a bad economy, almost all forms of entertainment do well. The movie industry had their best years ever, per capita, during the Depression (that first one, in 1929).
The best thing for NASCAR and its fans would be an immediate cutback in the number ... and the length ... of some races. Sprint Cup has more races than IndyCar and F1 combined, or close to it. And when Dale Jr., says that the first 400 miles of a race are boring to him, how does he think the people at home feel?

[Aramingo]

Here's an odd NASCAR memory:

During the first gas crisis in the 70s, they shortened the length of their races to conserve fuel. A small but telling gesture.

You pointout that the AAA circuit used to be sponsored by a beer company. The senior circuit used otbe sponsored by a tobacco company. Beer & cigarettes - two of the four basic food groups for some people. NASCAR is slowly, slowly moving away from such sponsors in order to project a more family friendly image. And they've got an ex-NBA guy doing some of the races, trying to at least pay lip service to diversity (sp?)

Apparently, they want to keep growing. They've gotten much better at the family stuff - ask anybody who went to a race before the '80s.

I've long puzzled over the agida that liberals get about this sport. After all, who wouldn't root for a sport where everyone spends the afternoon moving to the left?

[SteveParker]

Thanks for the comment! Please tell 10,000 of your friends we're here! That last line is very funny ... I'll use it, too, with your permission ... And you got me going, too! Damn the 250-word limit!

I'm happy, too, that tobacco sponsors are out of racing almost everywhere, but now NASCAR allows hard liquor sponsors ... what a joke! A sport supposedly aimed at 'families' and heavily christianist counts Jim Beam as among their best friends ... and sponsors.
The facts are that NASCAR has not only allowed this 'redneck' perception to become a truism, they've encouraged it. Confiscate those rebels flags some fans wave! This is why NASCAR is not a national sport and never will be if things don't change and NASCAR doesn't welcome all Americans.
NASCAR even tried to claim that Juan Pablo Montoya being in the sport was as a result of this Drive for Diversity. Not even car-owner Chip Ganassi couldn't take that with a straight face.
Announcers: I like Daugherty and he's improving. Darrell Waltrip needs to be sent to cover ice racing in Siberia; let's hear his 'boogity, boogity' line in Russian. And Tim Brewer? That is one scary dude ... Looks and sounds like the sleazy car salesman I see in my dreams. Reminds me of Gov. George Wallace, and not in a positive way.
Thanks again for posting! Come back often! We're a 'car-everything' Blog, but need all the motor racing fans from all series that we can get here!

[Idytme]

I enjoyed this article. Too bad it can only go under the topic of "entertainment".
NASCAR is already very worried that people cannot afford the gas to go to the races. So maybe in a few years, there will be less of them. I suspect their popularity, at least on TV, though will only go up with the bad economy. The question being if the companies can afford the sponsorships.