NASCAR Sponsorship

I am not sure if this was mentioned before, but why is it NASCAR and Sprint won't allow new cell phone companies to place sponsorship on race cars, but yet there was a lot of Verizon commercials during the race yesterday?

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Permalink Reply by Beagle7 on February 16, 2009 at 12:33pm

Uhmmm a little area of law called Antitrust...lol

Nascar may be able to control what companies can sponsor a car in their series (which is a debatable argument if it ever went to court), and one can understand the argument that a company willing to spend $70 million a year for 10 years (or whatever insane amount the money was) deserves some exclusive protection, but they certainly cannot interfere with contractual relations bewteen Fox and companies that want to buy advertising space during commecials of a broadcast.

Also, Verizon is getting cute with how to still integrate itself during the race, like the Verizon Wireless driver Cam. Stuff like that was not explicitly outlawed in the contract signed with Nascar, so they (Sprint) cannot grow" the agreement and say it does.

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Permalink Reply by TOG on February 16, 2009 at 12:39pm

It's good to have lawyers as friends..lol....

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Permalink Reply by JoCo on February 16, 2009 at 8:51pm

Yeah I got a huge kick out of all the David Stremme "Verizon In-Car Cam" shots during the Shootout. Screw NASCAR for taking away good sponsorship opportunities from the teams. And I'm glad that Stremme's Cup car is a near-facsimile of Allgaier's Nationwide Verizon ride.