Mark Wright’s Blog

The automobile industry is the newest industry on life support in the United States.  Already legislation is being put together to bail them out of their financial woes.  This will also have an effect on one of my favorite sports, NASCAR.

The last year hasn’t been a particularly good one for the sport.  While the on track racing has been exciting, the business side has been somewhat disappointing.  Ticket sales at many of the tracks have been average or below normal.  It is not unusual to see a lot of empty seats on Sunday. 

Since corporate sponsorships foot a lot of the bill for NASCAR teams, a slow economy is the last thing in the world the sport needs.  Many longtime sponsors such as Texaco and Kodak are leaving the sport or severely limiting their roles.  Caterpillar is leaving Bill Davis racing to become a sponsor for Richard Childress Racing and General Mills is leaving Petty Enterprises for Childress as well. 

We are also seeing contraction in the sport.  The recent propose merger of Dale Earnhardt Inc. with Chip Ganassi Racing would have been unheard of five years ago.  Now it is a necessity to keep both struggling race teams afloat by pooling their resources..

Legendary race teams such as Petty Enterprises and The Wood Brothers are struggling to find sponsorship and speed.  The Wood Brothers, at one time a force in the sport has missed numerous races and had to rely on the past champions provisional of Bill Elliot to make races.  With the evolution of the sport, super teams such as Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing, Roush Racing and Richard Childress Racing have a stranglehold on NASCAR.  In the current Chase for the Cup, all 12 participants are from these four organizations.  Since they are multi-car teams, they have the ability to share a wealth of resources and data to improve performance.  This gives them a huge advantage over one and two car teams such as The Wood Brothers and Petty Enterprises. 

With General Motors is having severe financial problems, it will be interesting to see if they continue to support NASCAR as they have in the past.  There are currently four manufacturers in NASCAR, Chevrolet, Ford, Dodge and Toyota.  While Toyota is the most recent, they are the only one that doesn’t seem to be feeling the effects of the economy the way the others have.    

While it is a form of entertainment, NASCAR is a business first and foremost.  We have seen the death of the local hardware, grocery and variety stores with the birth of mega stores like Home Depot and Wal-Mart.  Many businesses have felt the effects of contraction.  The bigger fish either buyout or run the little fish out of business.  It will be interesting to see if this form of economic Darwinism will translate to the auto makers themselves.  Before you know it, instead of Chevrolet, Ford, there may be Toyota, Honda  and BMW instead.