Shadowracer you have brought up a very important element of racing. The investor likes to see a return on their investment. This is the job of everyone connected to a track.
I would think if returns are good you see happy campers and they will repeat. Probably the only answer to this is everybody connected just have to be better sales people so everybody is a winner.
Well yes they do need to be salespeople in order to get the sponsor on board. Keeping them there long term can sometimes be kind of tough.
When a company decides to sell advertising, the rates are usually based on X amount of cents for every person exposed to the advertiser's name and message, and how many times. So (just to pull a number out of the air) if there's 3000 people in the stands over 20 nights racing, that's 60,000 exposures times
X. Factor in web exposure, signage etc and you get your figure for the season. When the season is over, its up to the advertiser to say whether or not their 60,000 times
X brought in a reasonable enough increase in business through that advertising to justify the cost.
You will find, especially in racing, that a lot of sponsors come and go over the years for that very reason. Some of them don't even have much reason to want to advertise to the general public. Challenger, a trucking company, and Cintas, a work uniform company are two that I never quite understood. While we certainly appreciate their support and applaud them for getting involved, how many people in the stands on a Friday night have a burning need to hire a tractor trailer, or order a gross of cook's aprons? Its no surprise they weren't around long, because the benefit likely didn't justify the cost.
On the other hand, some companies' involvement
does make more sense, like auto parts places...such as APC. However, chances are that those of us in the stands that have need of auto parts probably already knew about them. I can't speak for APC, but it was probably a matter that their sponsorship of the Late Models was an attempt make it so the fans would think of APC
first whenever they needed parts. Only they (APC)have the answers to whether or not it was actually worth the cost.
So there's a lot of thought that goes into whether to sponsor or not, and whether its worth the expense of staying for a longer erm. Surely, some sponsorship gambits work, and some don't. It's always worked that way and likely always will. Just the nature of the racing beast.
So yes, salesmanship is important. What is more important though is finding the right
kind of sponsor for the venue. That's a little tougher.
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