Posts
76
Joined
7/15/2008
Location
Oceanside, CA, USA
Edited Date/Time
1/26/2012 11:44pm
First time poster, long time lurker...huge fan of the show.
I have been reading a lot of the posts regarding our sport going mainstream or staying as is or even going back to what it was like 10 years ago, and it really got me thinking about some of the idiosyncracies (sp?) of our sport/ industry, so I am going to post some OPINION questions to see what some of you guys really think is going on and maybe we can all learn something along the way.
Why do you guys think our sport has such a hard time securing AND KEEPING big ticket, non-indemic sponsors for our teams and series?
For instance, NASCAR (I know, don't string me up yet) had Winston as a sponsor up until the tobacco police forced them out, and they were ultimately replaced by Nextel/ Sprint. Our sport during recent years solidified a relationship with Amp'd Mobile which in turn went belly up and left one of our premier series without a sponsor. Follow it back even further for the last 5 to 10 years other than the industry sponsors (Parts Unlimited, FMF etc.) when was the last time we had a consistent 5 to 10 year large non-indemic sponsor come in and support our sport?
Alright, let it happen.
Ketchum
I have been reading a lot of the posts regarding our sport going mainstream or staying as is or even going back to what it was like 10 years ago, and it really got me thinking about some of the idiosyncracies (sp?) of our sport/ industry, so I am going to post some OPINION questions to see what some of you guys really think is going on and maybe we can all learn something along the way.
Why do you guys think our sport has such a hard time securing AND KEEPING big ticket, non-indemic sponsors for our teams and series?
For instance, NASCAR (I know, don't string me up yet) had Winston as a sponsor up until the tobacco police forced them out, and they were ultimately replaced by Nextel/ Sprint. Our sport during recent years solidified a relationship with Amp'd Mobile which in turn went belly up and left one of our premier series without a sponsor. Follow it back even further for the last 5 to 10 years other than the industry sponsors (Parts Unlimited, FMF etc.) when was the last time we had a consistent 5 to 10 year large non-indemic sponsor come in and support our sport?
Alright, let it happen.
Ketchum
I have been Yamabob for 10 years. All I know about Yamaboy is his KDub photoshop skills
Ketchum
The Shop
Luxon 4-Post Bar Mounts
$189.95 - $239.95
DeCal Works Huge Plastic Inventory of UFO and Polisport kits.
Look at it this way, if you were a company with ad dollars and you wanted to reach men, age 16 through 28, who would you put your money behind, supercross or x games? Supercross will have nominal TV coverage (aired once, maybe twice) and X games will be rebroadcast again and again. Just an example.
Plus, its really about ego. If you had to tie your branding to a sporting event, would it be NASCAR (that is worshiped as religion) or SX/MX which is fighting for its own identity?
Great points, especially with X Games which is a made for TV event and ends up being broadcast for an entire year.
I am not sure however that MX/SX and Dirt Biking as a whole are not also worshipped as a religion.
But I will re-word my question a bit.
What do you think it is about NASCAR that makes it possible for them to secure and maintain sponsorship that we can't?
Ketchum
I like the first line of your first post, classic Ketchum wording...
JM21
Ketchum
I thought I passed you on the highway the other day.
Semi-retired. I am working on a project and some of this feedback might be relevant.
How bout you?
Ketchum
Right on, glad you got something going.
Just still pluggin away down here at SponsorHouse, going well.
But it really is a numbers game. NASCAR has built, through many many years, a culture that is truly ingrained in the American psyche, especially in the south. From its roots running booze to the corporate/advertising culture of today, it has been around a long time and will not go anywhere for a while longer. Motorcycles are still seen as dangerous and rebellious but even soccer moms drive Chevys.
But everything comes to an end and new things are always being developed. NASCAR attendance is slipping and eventually, just like baseball is no longer America's sport, NASCAR will one day fade.
I don't think moto will ever be mainstream or obtain a steady non-endimic partner to help finance the system. I think we will bounce around the auto oe's for a while and maybe an energy drink company or two. I think we will struggle as we try to outgrow ourselves.
For anyone in the industry, we have seen motorcycles grow in popularity, in the double digits, for years now with very little expansion of our reach with racing into the non riding public. Now we are entering a period where a lot of companies are struggling and we will see some dollars leaving the sport. If we were too big, this could crash us and send everything into an industry wide recession. One could maybe make the argument that things are going this way now.
Just throwing that out there.
NASCAR reaches a lot more people, but think of the cost of putting your product on a NASCAR hood. You would think mx has good bang for buck. It has a neatly defined demographic that is easy to target, relative affluence, and a hardcore fan base of lifelong fans.
I wonder if some of the fan's attitudes (Reed's public hangings, booing RC, criticizing Travis, flipping off Bubba, etc.) has something to do with it. There is an air of animosity that surrounds this sport for some reason and a lot of behind the scenes dealmaking that might put a sophisticated sponsor off.
Pit Row
There are personalities that are easy to pick up in the first 10 mins, in Nascar, and people seem to like to follow personalities in any sport(even those who don't or haven't watched Nascar much). In motocross, this doesn't seem the case so much, lately.
For Women
Even housewives can turn past it on TV and connect because Snuggle Bear is on a car, and they stop to see how the Snuggle Bear car does. Product branding at it's finest. (Might be a gay analogy, but there it is. Also just my opinion.) Seriously, I bought a little car shaped tin of mints in the shape of Tony Stewart's car the other day at Home Depot. Why? Because I thought they were cute. LOL.
For motocross, as of late, there don't seem to be any personalities that are so different from each other. The Nascar guys are definitely all different in how they come across, they seem more real and not so rehearsed, as the MX guys do lately. I don't know much about Nascar, but from the few times I have seen it, I can tell you Kyle Busch stands out, as does Tony Stewart.
Good question Bob!
Sherri
Universal Studios sponsored Team Honda for 7 years and got virtually no publicity from it. (Yes, I remember the Mummy bike, Scorpion bike and Jurassic Park bike.)
I'm sure there were even a lot of motocross fans that didn't know Universal Studios was a sponsor of the team. One small Woody Woodpecker logo on the side of a bike doesn't convey a whole lot by itself.
-
Remember when Mazda Trucks sponsored the Outdoor series? Well then Chevy showed some interest so Mazda got the boot. Then when Chevy leaves, who's there to pick up the slack? No one. The AMA shot themselves in the foot and pushed out a sponsor (Mazda) that seemed excited about the sport. Now we have Toyota and they are also showing a lot of enthusiasm towards motocross. Let's hope they stick around.
I've got a lot more thoughts/opinions on this subject but not enough time right now. There are so many things that need to be done differently in this sport when it comes to sponsors & growth that it's hard to even discuss it on a forum like this. And unfortunately I don't think CCE really cares about long term, sustainable growth anyway.
As long as they are filling up stadium seats in the present, they couldn't care less about anything else. Monster Trucks, dirt cycles, it's all the same to them....$$$$$.
With Speed once and that's it, ESPN/EXPN plays the X-Games over and over again...hmm hello TV are you listening ??
S
Formula 1, NASCAR have drama.
Let Jlaw back in, catch a rider or two at a brothel, one with a drinking problem then you have something to build on.
S
S
How do you spell your name backwards, boB?
Welcome aboard boB.
And yes I know the banquet is open to the public, but that amounts to what an additional 200 people, maybe? That is why I said industry only.
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