Insomniac
05-31-07, 07:18 PM
Now that I'm finally back.
Champ Car is actually more mainstream than UFC. You'll see more women and more old farts and a Champ Car race. In fact, that's probably the biggest reason we're having trouble finding sponsors. Lots of sponsors would want to put their products in front of 50,000 young men in Long Beach. 20,00 young guys, some women and some old farts is not that exciting.
It's not the demographics. It's the cost for sponsorship vs. the number of eyeballs. Even if you assumed that no person attended more than one race a year. Say they average 50k per race day. 50k * 16 races = 800k eyeballs. And say they average a 2.0 rating all year (very generous), and the likelihood is that the majority of those eyes are the same. Even saying that 25% are one time viewers only, that works out to 500k * 16 races = 8M eyeballs. So you have 800k at the race, 1.5M viewers all season for 16 races and another 8M viewers who watched one race. That's a little over 10M eyeballs, being super generous. Is that worth $2M+ to be the primary sponsor on the car? They could buy a super bowl ad that will get an order of magnitude more exposure for that much.
I don't know if any owners are willing to take a lot less and still give them full sponsorship, if they are, they still can't get anyone to bite. There's a big disconnect between the cost of sponsorship and ROI. One or both of those needs to move before money starts flowing.
Champ Car is actually more mainstream than UFC. You'll see more women and more old farts and a Champ Car race. In fact, that's probably the biggest reason we're having trouble finding sponsors. Lots of sponsors would want to put their products in front of 50,000 young men in Long Beach. 20,00 young guys, some women and some old farts is not that exciting.
It's not the demographics. It's the cost for sponsorship vs. the number of eyeballs. Even if you assumed that no person attended more than one race a year. Say they average 50k per race day. 50k * 16 races = 800k eyeballs. And say they average a 2.0 rating all year (very generous), and the likelihood is that the majority of those eyes are the same. Even saying that 25% are one time viewers only, that works out to 500k * 16 races = 8M eyeballs. So you have 800k at the race, 1.5M viewers all season for 16 races and another 8M viewers who watched one race. That's a little over 10M eyeballs, being super generous. Is that worth $2M+ to be the primary sponsor on the car? They could buy a super bowl ad that will get an order of magnitude more exposure for that much.
I don't know if any owners are willing to take a lot less and still give them full sponsorship, if they are, they still can't get anyone to bite. There's a big disconnect between the cost of sponsorship and ROI. One or both of those needs to move before money starts flowing.