Submitted by NASCAR Ranting and Raving Blog

Well after nearly 2 weeks of being put-off here is the much anticipated Part 3 of my soon be longer than 3 Part series.

Part 3: Get Rid of ‘Exclusive’ Sponsorship Deals

This issue reared its ugly head this year with the Nextel/NASCAR vs Cingular/AT&T Mexican stand-off.

To solve this issue in its simplest terms all NASCAR has to do is get rid of its exclusive sponsorship deals with it advertisers. Sure, NEXTEL, Sprint, whatever can be the ‘official’ wireless provider of NASCAR, but NASCAR should not give them the right to dictate who can be a sponsor of car in the series (ie. other wireless providers like AT&T).

By having these exclusive contracts NASCAR has now put itself in position to be competing with the very teams that make NASCAR what it is for sponsorship dollars. Going back to the Cingular/AT&T thing for a second; NASCAR put itself in a position to compete with one of the legendary teams, Richard Childress Racing, in its series for sponsorship dollars by having the ‘exclusive’ deal with NEXTEL. NEXTEL did not want other wireless companies in the series and NASCAR let them do that and, if it were not for a loophole, RCR would have one less sponsor right now.

By having these exclusive deals with various companies NASCAR is limiting sponsorship options for its racing teams. What it Budweiser became the ‘exclusive’ beer of NASCAR? That would mean Miller, Coors, and any other beer (or drink made with malt, barley, or hops) would not be allowed to sponsor a race team. All those potential beer and beer related beverage makers would be lost to the racing community as potential sponsors.

Now granted they have done the grandfather thing in the past, but what if the beer company that was grandfathered wanted to put one of it’s other brands on the car like when Miller switched to Genuine Draft in the early 1990’s? They wouldn’t be able to do it. Furthermore, what if the grandfathered company changed it’s packaging/labelling, like Coors Lite did between the mid 1990’s (blue, red, white) to the late 1990’s (silver)? They wouldn’t be able to run that car in the new colours at all.

With the cost of operating a competitive racing team increasing each year (with or without the CoT) and big money sponsors not as eager to spend their advertising dollars on racing sponsorships then don’t you think it would be in NASCAR’s best interest not to enter into exclusive sponsorship contracts so that potential sponsors will still be available to sponsor race teams?

Without adequate sponsorship dollars there will be fewer and fewer competitive race cars out there and the quality of the competition will decrease on the track making viewing a race less interesting thus creating less interest in NASCAR and with less interest comes fewer sponsorship dollars - exclusive or otherwise.

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