New CEO wants Sprint in soccer, not NASCAR

You may have heard that NASCAR lost its title sponsor the other day, that telecommunications giant Sprint is pulling out of the draft after the 2016 season. What you may not have heard is one of the reasons why: Soccer. Sprint has a new CEO, and while he's from south of the Mason-Dixon line, it's real far south, farther south than Kannapolis, N.C., or even Hueytown in Alabama. Marcelo Claure is from Bolivia. When he became CEO of Sprint in August, it was agreed by a board of directors and stockholders and such that Claure should eliminate 3,700 jobs and $1.5 billion from departmental budgets.

Sprint's initial agreement with NASCAR was $750 million for 10 years, so that must have seemed like a good place to start, especially if you're a soccer guy and not a car guy. Claure owns a soccer team in Bolivia and is trying to bring Major League Soccer to Miami. His partner is global soccer icon David Beckham. Ain't that a corner kick to the head? "You certainly don't want to lose a sponsor like that," Las Vegas Motor Speedway president Chris Powell said, "but I don't think this is a comment on the business of NASCAR. I think it's more a comment on Sprint's business. That's what I'm seeing from a distance." Las Vegas Review Journal