Why NFL still dwarfs NASCAR

The overnight TV ratings out today saw CBS earn a 42.6/63 overnight Nielsen rating for Super Bowl XLI featuring the Colts-Bears last night, up 2% from a 42.1/62 for the Steelers-Seahawks last year on ABC. Compare this to the motorsports ratings, and you can see how huge the game is. The $2.6 million for a :30 second spot during the Super Bowl would get you about 6 Nextel Cup Races as a primary sponsor with a top team, and estimating a 5 rating with each race, you are getting close to the viewership of the game (6 races x 5 = 30), but not equal (30 is still less than 42.6). Put this to open wheel (either Champ Car or IRL) and you can see just how bad their ROI is in terms of TV audience reach for the same $2.6 million (17 races x say 1.0 per race = 17 for entire season….much less than 42.6).

There are other factors such as the “buzz" created around Super Bowl ads, plus the fact that the TV ad is a targeted message (sometimes), and a race sponsorship is just a brand on-screen with no message, so the values are not apples to apples. This is why it is so important for the race sponsorship to include more than just putting the sponsors name on the side of the car. The teams selling the sponsorship must give the sponsor more value by having the driver speak at sponsor engagements, sign autographs for its key customers and their families, and helping with print and TV ads by making the car and driver available to the sponsor for free to produce their ads.

NASCAR has a long way to go before it can ever hope to rival the NFL in sponsor value and open wheel racing, thanks to the destructive split caused by the creation of the IRL, has an even farther way to go……so racing had better wake up, think outside the box, and deliver new and creative ways of bringing a sponsor a return for their money.