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NASCAR, Liquor and Nudes, Oh My! |
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Do beer, tobacco and sex have a place in NASCAR?
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"I agree! If people can shell out money to help Tony Stewart pay his fine, surely we can get behind someone that really needs the help."
ANTHONYH58
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By Linda "Bou" Ladwig
The other day I read an article on a certain Entertainment and Sports Performance Network's web site. Now, this network used to have what I believed to be the best coverage of NASCAR, until a certain other network threw a lot of money at the sanctioning body and received the broadcasting contract. This article, however, didn't live up to the high standards formerly exhibited by the first network. It looked more like the writer took notes from some driver interviews, fed them into a paper shredder, assembled the story from the resulting confetti, and tacked on a "racy" headline just to get readers to the site.
The article had to do with "appropriate" sponsorship of NASCAR race teams. Now, NASCAR wants the public to see a sport with a "Family Friendly" image. To do so, they have a policy about what companies would make appropriate sponsors at the top level of competition. Some think it doesn't exist, but I believe that the policy may be scribbled on a napkin somewhere in the bottom of a drawer in NASCAR headquarters. It's a little hard to read, what with the barbecue sauce and malt beverage stains, but I think it goes something like this: "Y'all can be a sponsor as long as ya don't make us look bad, or the guv'mint says ya can't".
So, what would one more adult-oriented sponsor mean in NASCAR? After crunching some numbers, I found that the majority of companies that sponsor Winston Cup are relatively unobjectionable.
Grouped loosely, there are:
- Six gas/oil companies (car numbers 1, 10, 12, 28, 93, and 99)
- Nine automotive related companies (car numbers 9, 15, 18, 19, 21, 24, 25, 29, and 77)
- Seven home improvement and construction related companies (car numbers 17, 20, 22, 31, 33, 44, and 55)
- Two telephone providers (car numbers 01 and 45)
- Two breakfast cereals (car numbers 5 and 43), and
- Twelve "miscellaneous" (car numbers 4, 7, 11, 14, 26, 32, 36, 66, 88, 90, 96, and 97).
There are only five cars that are sponsored by what could be considered "adult-oriented" companies: three beer companies (car numbers 2, 8, and 40), one smokeless tobacco company (car number 92), and one… well, let's just call it a male performance enhancement drug (car number 6).
While the last five sponsors I listed may be "family-oriented" if your family has appeared on the Jerry Springer show, some fans are arguing that these products and others are not appropriate, especially for NASCAR's youngest fans. And now this article has taken an appearance with Hugh Hefner and some half-hearted negotiations and made at least one racer look pretty bad. Worse, some uninformed fans have been flooding message boards with pleas like: "the moral obligation to fans… must outweigh the financial needs of teams".
Should NASCAR alienate these companies? They do contribute much to the success of the sport. The "immoral five" listed above constitute 12% of a race's 43-car field. In the 2000 season, the beer-sponsored cars alone won 18% of the races, scored 9% of the possible top ten finishes, and led 22% of the laps run. They are getting a lot of exposure for their money, considering that they can't slap their names or logos on die-cast collectibles, and most schools have dress codes that prohibit the wearing of clothing with beer or tobacco names or logos.
Or, should NASCAR accept more sponsorship from adult-oriented companies? There are arguments on both sides. Some fans say that the survival of under-funded teams is essential to the sport, so for them any sponsor is a good sponsor. They argue that when it comes to liquor and sex, we all "do it", so what is the harm of putting it on a race car? Other groups argue that products you wouldn't bring to church shouldn't be broadcast on TV; that constitutes marketing of those products to children, a group who legally are not allowed to buy or use them.
The bottom line is money. Race teams need it, NASCAR wants to make lots of it, and sponsors want to see a return on their investment of it. Like anyone who is living at poverty level will tell you, when you're desperate you'll take money from the strangest places. When you have no other choice, you have to set your morals aside. It's just unfair that a media outlet made a race team look that desperate only days before a respected company offered them sponsorship.
If it's always darkest before the dawn, hopefully the rest of the season will be bright and sunny for them, and the question of whether or not to accept a questionable sponsor in NASCAR can be put off to another day.
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