ALT-1 Sponsoring a Motorsport Event or Team
For most individuals who involve themselves with motorsports, the subject of sponsorship is one somewhat akin to voodoo and black magic, best left to the professionals. There are many facets of sponsoring a motorsport event or individual team that is involved in motorsports.
Motorsports can mean many things to many people, racing is the most popular, project and show vehicles being second and third in no particular order. Whether it be NASCAR, Drag Racing, Circle track or Off-Road there are almost as many ways to sponsor as there are forms of racing. The most obvious and probably the best way to get your name out there is to be the title sponsor. This is also the most expensive way to sponsor an event, so if you have the duckets, go for it, however not many of us in business for ourselves have that kind of money laying around.
Co-sponsoring an event is also a great way to go if you can get it, many of the smaller events have several co-sponsors because the draw of people is smaller so the appeal of spending a lot of money on being a title sponsor is diminished. The most important thing you must keep in mind when deciding on what, when and where to sponsor is what the return will be. Lenny Stahl is the president of Motorsport Technology; a small company nestled in Grand Terrace, CA., is in the business of manufacturing billet aluminum wheel adapters and spacers. Lenny told me the single most important factor in deciding whom to sponsor is how much exposure his company will receive as a direct result of the sponsorship. He also told me that he receives approximately four requests per month for free product and that out of the four, he usually grants two. Lenny was also quick to point out that each request is gone over by at least two individuals so as not to be seen by one person with limited knowledge in one field.
During my recent jaunt to Las Vegas for the 1998 SEMA show I had the opportunity to speak with several people as it relates to marketing. The folks at Skyjacker suspension told me they receive several hundred calls per month for product sponsorship verses Goodyear tire company that gets several hundred calls per week. As you can see this can get to be a full time job going over proposals and handling phone calls related to sponsorship. Once the word gets out you are in the sponsorship mood you will find you have more friends than money. This is where it gets tricky, the most common mistake is sponsoring for the wrong reasons, don't let your emotions run wild in the decision making process. I should mention that it is usually best to have someone else look at sponsorship proposals beside yourself.
In the quest for sponsorship there are those that will hastily put together a proposal based on a quick telephone call they made to your company detailing everything they think you want to see or hear as far as who will benefit from the sponsorship. This proposal may include such information as attendance figures, event dates, coverage and the amount of other participants. I can't tell you how important it is to check and double check these figures before shelling out money or product to a perspective sponsoree.
Along with checking figures, one of the things you should check on is what happens if the event is rained out? How far away is the rain date? Is your money returned to you in the event the date is cancelled? These are some of the ways your sponsorship can get washed out, no pun intended.
Another way to get involved is to sponsor an individual or team. This can be done one of several ways, the most obvious is to provide a product sponsorship, and another way is to provide much needed capital towards the purchase of parts, uniforms, accessories and so forth. But alas I am getting a bit ahead of myself; I plan on covering the racer's side of sponsorship in the latter part of this article.
Involving yourself and your company in motorsports can be especially rewarding, for one thing the fans will view your company as a leader in the performance arena. Case in point, Fabtech Motorsports began its illustrious career from meager beginnings, I can remember when Dave Winner, Fabtech's president and founder started racing Toyota two wheel drive mini-trucks in the southern California desert. Dave handily won his class many times over and it was found out that he was building his own parts in house, soon thereafter everyone wanted his winning formula and today his company has just moved to its new home, which is over 20,000 square feet. Anyone who has ordered a Fabtech catalog of late or even opened up an off road related magazine can't help but notice the voluminous articles written about the company and its constant research and development of new and exciting suspension systems, which by the way are not just Toyota related.
Today's buyer of high performance parts knows who his friends are and will go out of his way to purchase from those who are involved in racing and motorsports, this is a good thing and done well can help you generate new revenue and new customers.
During the week of third week of January 1999 I spent three days in Laughlin, Nevada covering the SCORE Laughlin Desert Challenge. It's a tough job but somebody has to do it. During my vacation, er, I mean investigation of sponsorship and racing I interviewed a few racers and sponsors and this is what they had to say;
"If the racer wants us to give him money, we have to see a benefit, our company pays out if a racer with our logo on his/her car appears in a publication. Depending on how big the photo is, depends on how much we pay out." Penhall Optical, sponsor.
"We are self funded, I am not at liberty to say what it costs to field a team this size, I can tell you what it cost to build this "truggy", a lot. Anonymous member of the Terrible Herbst Racing Team. *note, I did find out the cost of the Herbst "truggy" was over eighty thousand dollars, this cost did not cover the expense of getting to the race, nor the cost of the helicopter they brought with them or the forty volunteers. Herbst also had an "F-150 truck" entered in this race also
"I see the growth of this industry moving forward in leaps in bounds, what other race series anywhere can the average person buy a rulebook, build a vehicle to specifications and as long as it passes technical inspection race against the best racers in the off-road industry?" Sal Fish, President of SCORE International, the sanctioning body for the Laughlin Race Series.
Now I would like to let you in on a bit of history, I have been involved with some form of motorsports for over twenty years. I currently am engaged in a program that requires me to have an open line of communication with a little over forty-five sponsors. So at this point what I would like to do is share with you what its like to hunt sponsors, the flip side of the coin so to speak.
Chasing down a sponsor can be a full time job, if you are running your race team as a business, it is a full time job. Let me let you in on what a typical call is like to a perspective sponsor, ring, ring, "hello Wiley's Wavy Widgets can I help you?" "Hi, my name is Simple Simon and I would like to know who I would speak to about the possibility of sponsorship as it relates to motorsports." "Hold please", this hold time can run anywhere in the neighborhood of three to eighteen minutes with no guarantee that anyone will ever come back on the line (this is commonly known as perma-hold).
"I'm sorry that line is busy would you like to continue to hold or would you like voicemail?" This is where they trap you, if you hold it costs you money and it makes you look desperate. Should you decide on the voicemail option however you must leave some sort of message that will give Mr./Ms. Money the opportunity to find out who you are and what you want, probably never returning your call. Think about it for a minute, he now has your name and the reason you are calling (you want something for free) in the future when you call he now has the ability to tell the receptionist why he doesn't want to take your call. Take my advice don't hold and don't leave a message, you can always call back. If you were able to get a name you can call back in a few days and ask for your buddy Mr./Ms. Money, the receptionist will not remember your voice so you have a great shot at getting through. Think about this, that one call just ate up anywhere from ten to twenty minutes of your day, not counting the amount of time you spent tracking down the company and its phone number, that's just one call. (To give you an idea of what it took to build two project vehicles for SEMA I sent out over one hundred and fifty proposals.)
Lets pretend for a minute you actually got through to someone and they listened patiently while you extolled the virtues of sponsoring a race team or show car or project vehicle or whatever. Let's pretend even further that person said, "send me a proposal and I'll see if it's something we are interested in". After you peel yourself off the ceiling you now have to come up with a written proposal detailing everything you said on the phone. Remember that it shouldn't look like you put it together with your buddies over a pizza dinner at the local Chucky Cheese. This proposal has to be nice looking, no, let me re-phrase that it has to be Bitchin' ya wanna know why? Because you are asking for as the group Dire Straits put it, "Money for nothin' and your chicks for free".
As important as it is to get your proposal in the hands of Mr./Ms. Money it is even more important to make sure it makes sense and has all the vital information. With the ability of anyone to troddle on down to the local Kinko's and pound out a professional looking proposal on a computer, then have it laser printed, copied, bound, covered and handed over to you ready to go out in the next day envelope at your local Mail, UPS, or FED/EX center it doesn't make sense to do it any other way.
I would like to interject something here, if you can afford it, buy yourself/team a computer, as my uncle Irving would say, "it couldn't hoit". In closing I would like to ask anyone in the position of granting sponsorships a favor, please take the time to help a team/individual that is new at this crazy business of sponsor hunting. The one thing you do have to give that costs you or your company nothing is advice, on behalf of sponsor hunters everywhere, thank you.
If you would like more information on off road racing visit Score's website at www.score-international.com
If you need more info on building a vehicle to go racing in please visit our links page, there are several companies that can build anything from a simple bumper to a turn key vehicle.
