Gordon facing 8 race season
5 Comments Quote selected text Published November 13th, 2009 in NASCAR News
Robby Gordon, who has run a full Sprint Cup schedule as a driver/owner since 2006, says he has enough sponsorship for only eight races in 2010. “I’m looking at a lot of weekends off,” a frustrated Gordon said Friday at Phoenix International Raceway. Gordon said he has two four-race commitments from sponsors for next season. One of his major sponsors, Jim Beam, announced earlier in the year that it would not return to the sport. “Nobody is spending money,” Gordon said. “Everybody is cutting the fat out of everything. To be in racing you have to be a pretty big company.”
Gordon said many of the larger teams are making deals for well less than the market value because they can afford to, but that runs teams like his out of business. “It’s sponsorship suicide,” said Gordon, who is 34th in points. Gordon said NASCAR needs to create a unified marketing plan so every team is on a level playing field. He said there are so many different plans now that sponsors are confused. He expects to see more start-and-park teams next season than ever, adding he doesn’t plan to be one. “I don’t know what we’re going to do,” Gordon said. “We’re going to continue to work hard to sell races through March of next year. After that I’m looking at a lot of weekends off.”
This is just a PR effort to get attention behind his team for next year so he can get back to the “underdog” status that he had the first 2 years he did his own team. Between his checkbook and John Menards checkbook that team has enough money to field 20 full-time cars.
I always thought Robby and Paul would partner up with Paul’s daddy John which would mean full time fabricators with plenty of overtime!
Gordon said NASCAR needs to create a unified marketing plan so every team is on a level playing field. He said there are so many different plans now that sponsors are confused.
Does this sound feasible or just sponsor smoke ?
NASCAR teams are individual companies it is up to those said companies to get sponsors by themselves. If one company offers a better deal then another then so be it that’s how it works.
What Robby is suggesting is that NASCAR says “You can only charge X amount per race no matter what team you are”. And that is something that NASCAR nor any other motorsport sanctioning body should ever consider doing.
What Robby needs to do is partner his team with another team such as TRG. Not necessarily a merger, but a Partnership. That way the NASCAR side of things could be taken care of out of the TRG shop, the road racing side could be taken care of out of the TRG shop and the Off-road stuff (both RGM and TRG) could be taken care of out of the RGM shop. Bring all the other TRG drivers out there and all the other Team Menard drivers out there into the fold and make it Super-team of Motorsports. And then that team needs to approach sponsors with the theory of “get involved with this team and we’ll market you across all these types of racing with all these different drivers”. An example of what I mean would be Jim Beam (yes I know they are leaving but I’m using them anyway), they want to sponsor the team, so they buy 3 weeks sponsorship. Ok now during those 3 weeks every TRG/RGM racecar across the world would be addressed with various Jim Beam brand liveries. That way no matter what race you turn on TV or which one you attend JB is getting advertised.
Where it says addressed, it should actually say adorned.