NHRA and its Teams Needs to Capitalize on Mistakes Made in NASCAR

Business, especially big business is not for the faint of heart.  Therefore, if you are in business and you see a competitor possibly having some difficulties, it is perfectly understandable for to capitalize on those your opponent’s difficulties to help enhance your own position.

This is the position that NHRA seems to be in. There is a possible chink in the armor of the monster of motor sports NASCAR.

Nationwide Insurance has decided to pull sponsorship from the second level of NASCAR series known as Nationwide Series at the end of the 2014 year. 

 NAPA has pulled its support from the Michael Waltrip Racing organization after the debacle that occurred at the Richmond event involving Waltrip driver Clint Bowyer and the MWR Executive Vice President of Business Development and General Manager Ty Norris.  

Bowyer’s action of spinning with eight laps to go and bringing out a caution along with Norris telling MWR driver Brian Vickers to pit, which would put Vickers a lap down and then put NAPA driver Martin Truex Jr. into the NASCAR “Chase to the Sprint Cup.”

NASCAR penalized the NAPA driver Truex fifty driver points as well as the other MWR drivers. NASCAR also penalized Waltrip 50 owners’ points along with 300 thousand dollars.

This effectively put Truex out of the Chase, which cost MWR nearly 3 million dollars in lost revenue.

This action caused NAPA to pull its two remaining years of funding of MWR estimated at nearly 18 million dollars a year.

NAPA in a press release last week stated, “NAPA believes in fair play and does not condone actions such as those that led to the penalties assessed by NASCAR.”

Now this past weekend Five Hour Energy, the sponsor for MWR driver Clint Bowyer, company president Scott Henderson in a statement regarding NASCAR and NASCAR President Brian France stated that,” "There's a lot of talk about integrity," he said. "When the guy who's in charge can say, 'I can do whatever I want and I'm going to do it and I just did,' I wonder about integrity. I want to make sure we can win in this sport, OK?"

There is some sentiment that Five Hour will walk from MWR at the end of the 2013 season.

With all of this said, I would hope to think that people who work in the marketing department at the glass palace in Glendora, along with some of the marketing people working for the NHRA teams would be burning up the phones to those agencies handling some of these NASCAR marketing partners accounts.

If Five Hour Energy does pull out of MWR over lack of integrity, then the NHRA should be talking to Coke in Atlanta about the exclusivity clauses Coke has in place not allowing other drink companies to be marketing partners with NHRA teams.

The NHRA must capitalize on this opportunity to exploit and opening and bring more money and new marketing partners to the sport of drag racing.

Now I know that NAPA has a presence in the NHRA with DSR, however, it might get NAPA to expand on that platform and activation.

However, Five Hour Energy would find a great home in NHRA if Coke would allow it, and Five Hour could do a three-year deal with a NHRA team for the less than the cost of one year in NASCAR.

With ESPN losing their NASCAR, deal at the end of 2014 and possibly as early as the end of this year as being speculated by some. I see this as an opportunity for NHRA to leverage ESPN to get better coverage and air times.

All of this would require the NHRA to get motivated and be aggressive with some of its partners to take advantage of these situations.

I understand that this is pie in the sky kind of thinking; however, if these two sponsors are not very happy with NASCAR, there is a possibility that others might be not overly happy with NASCAR and with what has happened over the past two weeks.

Therefore as I stated before, it might behoove NHRA and their teams to start working hard on some of these opportunities.

It would take a lot of back end work, such as getting a better television package, and maybe some expanded programming on ESPN, or MAV TV by doing pre and post-race coverage of national events.

Alternatively, look at doing something with Sirius XM radio to provide coverage of the national events on satellite radio to expand the drag racing media presence. The NHRA already steams its events from the announcer’s deck, on the internet; they could do the same with Sirius XM radio

In concluding, I understand that I am not in any of these marketing people offices at NHRA or at the respective drag racing teams. So maybe some people who are employed in these offices might be working on these opportunities.

 If so I feel the NHRA needs to put out the word, they are going to be aggressively seeking to expand their marketing profile to expand the sport and take advantage of these mistakes made by NASCAR.

ESPN disrespects NHRA fans or did they?

Let us be honest the sport of professional drag racing is treated like red headed stepchildren in the arena of sports and in particular motorsports.   This was very evident last Sunday evening, when ESPN decided preempt the NHRA broadcast to show the conclusion of the rain delayed NASCAR event from Chicago.

The NHRA telecast was the switched to ESPN news or HD. This is not found on most basic cable or satellite subscriptions. Therefore, many fans could not watch the remainder of the event.

Now as I understand it, and it is possible my information is not accurate, ESPN pays NASCAR in the hundreds of millions of dollars for the rights to show “Cup” racing. The NHRA pays ESPN to show the drag races.

Now so it seems as though the management team at ESPN is more concerned with taking care of those they pay money too rather than take care of those who are a profit center for them.

However, I can see from a business standpoint that ESPN sees paying to broadcast NASCAR as an investment and ESPN must to do whatever possible to achieve a return on investment or better known as ROI.

Therefore, since there was MLB game Yankee’s verses Red Sox on the “mother ship” ESPN, and the millions of viewers tuned in to see that game on the Eastern Sea Board. There was no way ESPN is bumping that game.

Therefore, ESPN management saw NHRA drag racing as being “expendable” and who is bumped? The drag races to ESPN News, to make way for NASCAR on “the duce”. 

The problem is that not all the basic cable and satellite programing packages have ESPN News as an option.  Thus, those fans that waited all day to watch drag racing from Charlotte were “bitch slapped” by ESPN because of economic reasons, and demographics.

Is this entirely the fault of ESPN? No.  Why you ask?  Let us go back to that word demographics.  More people watch NASCAR. It is a basic fact.  More people who watch means more money is charged for advertisements on the broadcasts and there you have a return on the investment.

 Advertisements that are part of a racers marketing partner’s (sponsors) activation plan. So, the more people who watch, the more marketing partners get views of their branding and the more people will go out and act on the impulse to purchase from those partners. And the marketing partners see a return on investment.

NASCAR racing’s format one race with 43 cars running at the same time, allows ESPN to produce a live telecast.

NHRA’s format, of having many different classes of cars and focus strictly being on the  professional cars during the event, does not allow a live telecast to take place, because the focus of the event is on the professional categories,(top fuel, funny car, pro stock and pro stock bike)  so it has to broadcast on a  live/ tape delayed. 

The other thing I have noticed is that broadcasters at the NASCAR events will work in a team’s marketing partners into their descriptions of the action. I have heard many times pit reporter Dr. Jerry Punch describe a pit stop by Jimmy Johnson by saying. “Jimmy Johnson brings the “Lowes” “Chevrolet” to attention of Chad Knaus”.

I feel this practice has to happen more on the NHRA broadcasts to help promote those marketing partners who have decided to use NHRA drag racing to promote their products. “Tony Pedregon’s American Racing Wheels/ Toyota approaches the water box”.

One last thing, while having the drag race broadcast preempted and moved to another part of the ESPN family of channels, was a slap in the face to the drag racing fans, we as fans need to know that at least they are showing the events.

There is not a lot of other sports channels clambering to broadcast NHRA Drag Racing events. 

How can that change. In my humble opinion, a few things would help:

One- The NHRA must open up the market place start allowing more marketing partners to come into the sport by stopping the practice of exclusive advertising practices.  For example since Coke is the umbrella sponsor of the series, and under the NHRA/Coke sponsorship agreement,  there can be no other soft drink sponsorships can be brought into the sport.  

If this agreement is modified it would allow, for example other, drink companies come on board with teams needing marketing partners.  The possibility of more and diverse companies coming to drag racing is enhanced and expands the field with more teams.

Two- When a new company does come into the sport, the NHRA needs to keep their hands in their pockets and not try not get “theirs” too.  If the new company wants to expand their activation to the NHRA side then great. The NHRA needs to capitalize on those opportunities, only when offered.

Three- Teams need to do a better job of taking care of sponsors.  Do not give away the car just to have a name on the side of it. Team need to prepare handle the activation of the sponsorship, and under promise and over deliver on the expectations given to the marketing partner.

Learn a lesson from Kenny Bernstein, how he took care of Anheuser- Busch and Budweiser for nearly 30 years.

Four- TV must do more to promote those partners who are in the sport or those new partners who have decided to use NHRA drag racing to promote their products and services. Not concentrate on just a few of the “major” players such as JFR and DSR.

Five- NHRA needs to examine the pricing structure for event tickets so that more people and their families can afford to come to the races. Give the fans a great value.

Six- Fans need to do their part by going to the events marketing partners love to see a racecar in front of full grand stands. Fans need to interact through social media with teams and marketing partners, to show their engagement with the sport and the event.

Seven- Fans must become engaged, and support those who support drag racing. Moreover, tell those marketing partners why you use their service or buy their products.

Will all of these suggestions work? Will any work?  I honestly think that some of these suggestions will help expand the sport and keep the fans who love to watch drag racing on television from being “bitch slapped” again.