Auto Racing Sponsorship
Our focus here is obviously historical. We believe there is great value in knowing who did what for whom in racing over the many years of its development.
The SponsorFacts.com database lists more than 8,000 "title" sponsorship relationships since the late 1960s, the vast majority of them between corporate entities and racing team owners who provide driver/car tie-ins for promotional purposes. These are commonly known as team sponsorships.
The database contains a total of 20 title sponsorships in 1968. Ten years later, the number jumps to 105; in 1988, there were 190; in 1998, 248; in 2003, 269, and in 2004, a total of 355.
The database does not record any judgements about the success of those relationships. If a sponsorship program was well-conceived and carefully executed, and its goals reasonable, it probably was. Multi-year sponsorship deals are the norm in the sport.
Research reveals that sponsorships should not be counted on to do the unreasonable: A successful sponsorship deal couldn't prevent KMart from filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy; winning the Indy 500 hasn't catapulted Rachel's Potato Chips to the top of the snack brand charts, and sponsorships seem to have had little affect on the stock price of a sponsoring companies, according to T. Bettina Cornwell, Ph.D., an economist at the University of Memphis.
So, what can a sponsorship accomplish? Well, in the right circumstances it has demonstrated the ability to launch a national brand, even a new brand category. It has also demonstrated a remarkable ability to change consumer opinions about companies, brands, even intangible issues such as the way young people feel about military service.
Perhaps the most notable job an auto racing sponsorship has done for a brand was for Tide laundry detergent. Procter & Gamble ventured into NASCAR racing with team owner Larry McClure in 1985 on behalf of this decidedly woman-oriented product and was so overwhelmed by the bounce it produced in consumer loyalty -- and sales -- that Tide remained a sponsoring brand for 20 consecutive years (through 2006).
Commercial sponsorship is a relatively new phenomenon. Tony Meenaghan, a pioneer in the academic study of the subject at University College Dublin, is fascinated with its "development from small-scale activity to major global industry" since the late 1960s. Meenaghan points to a number of reasons for this growth, including one that is not widely recognized: "The performance of sponsorship, vis-a-vis other methods of communication in recessionary times, is testimony to the regard with which sponsorship is now held as a legitimate mode of communication."
Alas, there are still many doubters, even among racing professionals for whom sponsorship revenues can mean the difference between success and failure in motorsports, perhaps because it is so difficult to evaluate a sponsorship program from the outside looking in.
The doubters do not include Roger Penske, whose teams have won the Indianapolis 500 14 times. Penske is in the SponsorFacts.com database 156 times -- more than any other racing team entrepreneur. That's why we say about sponsorship:
Know more. Win more.
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