Large corporations pay millions of dollars for their name to be on a racecar. Why? because it is a very effective way to advertise to millions of people. I think it has a lot of advantages over conventional ways of advertising.
One reason for this is simply because by sponsoring a famous racer, you are backed by a famous person. Using celebrities in commercials is commonplace. Having a famous person back your product full-time is less usual. The image of the famous person is then associated with the image of the company.
A great example of this is Marlboro cigarettes. They sponsored Ferrari in Formula one for years. When laws against advertising tobacco were made, Ferrari changed the Marlboro logo to a bar code. The fans still knew what it meant, because the sponsorship was synonymous with the prestigious team.
The best reason to sponsor a racer is because your advertisement reaches so many people. The most-attended sporting event in America is the Indy 500, followed by 2 other racing venues, then the Kentucky Derby, a few more races, then Baseball's largest turnout in history. These statistics are from the article "
Indy 500 tops the list of America’s most-attended sports events" by Jay Busbee. He is a writer for Yahoo sports, so he is an expert on the topic. The article was written early this year, so the information is current.
The numbers for television viewing are hard to come by, as the most popular form of racing is Formula One, and it is shown worldwide. To get the number of viewers for the Superbowl, for example, would be easy. It is shown on one network, and the grand majority of viewers are in America. Formula One is shown in many countries, and on many different networks. According to Wikipedia, though, 600 million people watched every formula one race in 2008. Formula One also does not have one big race that attracts all of the viewers, so it is hard to compare to other sports or other racing series, that all have one all-important venue.
If you owned a corporation, would you think it would be worth it to sponsor a driver? Even if it cost millions of dollars, much like TV ads during the Superbowl? Why or why not?
It depends on the product, but most likely yes because it reaches so many people.
ReplyDeleteYes because the people watching the race look up the the drivers as idols. They see that the driver has some logo on their car, and we want to be like them.
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