NASCAR Sponsorship Stupidity

UPDATE This Winston Salem Journal article has more insight on the AT&T – Sprint-Verizon sponsorship fiasco.

03/18/07 Obviously it hasn't occurred to NASCAR that their current efforts to control who can become primary sponsors in the series is both shortsighted and stupid. Witness the current conflicts between Shell and Sunoco, Cingular/AT&T and Nextel/Sprint, Motorola and Nextel/Sprint.

Here you have sponsors willing to spend millions of dollars to both advertise via NASCAR, as well as pay to keep teams running in the series and NASCAR has to intervene and try to keep some out or dictate terms to them on exactly how and what they can do with their advertising. This is stupid and nothing more than complete egotistical garbage on the part of NASCAR.

The minute you start trying to dictate terms to large corporations, consider that Shell Oil has profits FAR in excess of anything NASCAR earns per year, the only thing you do is manage to alienate both that corporation and a few more who suddenly step back and wonder if it makes sense anymore to try to advertise through a mechanism that wants to dictate terms to them. The bottom line is that the more NASCAR tries to tighten its control over everything and anything that NASCAR comes in contact with, the more these corporations will pull back and reassess their involvement. Mika Malehorn