How to Get Sponsored by Polaris

Polaris RZR is everywhere in UTV racing, from youth classes to the factory pro turbo cars at King of the Hammers and Baja. Brett Carpenter manages Polaris's racing program and works with its racers, and he spent a full Meet the Sponsors episode with me laying out how the company decides who to back. He's also been on the other side, hustling for sponsors as a team manager, so his advice is practical. His decks pile up "in the hundreds for sure," and his DMs, he said, are blown up more than his inbox.

Know whether you're a racer or an ambassador

Polaris builds two kinds of programs, and you need to know which one you're pitching. "The thing with Polaris is that we have both brand ambassadors, we've got racers, we have some guys that cross over and do both," Carpenter said. For racers, the job is clear: "Racing is a performance business. So we want to win races." As a vehicle maker, Polaris wants "to prove the performance of the vehicle, we do that through accomplishments and, you know, tackling the gnarliest terrain." ▶ Watch Brett Carpenter explain the difference

Brand ambassadors are measured differently. "That's where we get things like content, you know, social media engagement, reach," he said. A full-time racer like Brandon Sims is judged on results: "Brandon's job is to win races." ▶ See the full answer

Casey Currie, the Dakar winner Polaris brought on as an ambassador, shows what the top of that ladder looks like. "Casey also provides a turnkey program," Carpenter said, with his own media staff, manager and partners. "The deliverables are defined up front and they deliver." Most of all, "he runs his program like a business. It is a business." And he made clear what era is over: "It is not a pay a guy, logo on the vehicle, exposure on social media. Those days are over. It's really a partnership in activating properly to accomplish all of our goals." ▶ Watch the interview

Every deal is built around a gap

Polaris doesn't have a standard package. "There's no two partnerships from a race standpoint that are the same," Carpenter said. Instead the company asks: "Okay, where are we lacking? Where do we need to improve? What classes do we need to see stronger representation?" Support ranges from full factory deals for racers who do this for a living down to "parts, discounts, contingency, things like that." Entry-level deals are usually one year. Bigger programs typically run one to two years, because "there's less pressure on a multi-year deal." ▶ Watch the interview

Send a short, clean, honest deck

Carpenter reads everything that reaches him. "First I want to see effort, and if they reach me, I'm intrigued, so for that alone I'm going to look at every deck or every proposal, every email." What he wants is simple: "I don't need fluff." Give him "a clean bio, I don't need two or three pages, but you know, elevator pitch me in a few paragraphs," and "give me a roadmap, you know, what your goals are over two to three years." That's how he decides whether "maybe there's an entry-level program that I can try some things out or get them on a bonus program and see where that goes." ▶ Watch Carpenter on what gets his attention

"Sometimes a page is better than six pages," he said later. He will also look you up. "If you're running a social media account and you're racing ... and you're soliciting sponsorship, you know, that's your business, that's your resume essentially." ▶ Watch the interview

Build a resume in smaller series first

Don't jump straight into the toughest desert series and expect to beat the factory teams. Carpenter's advice is to "build up a small resume, a resume of results, consistent results in a couple of these smaller series." He pointed to Maddie Wedding, who revamped her program, focused on a smaller desert series with Polaris's input, won her first professional race and used the buzz to move up. When proof of performance time comes, he wants "consistent results, you know, solid finishes," because "you can tell how a race team is prepared based on the results." ▶ Watch the interview

Treat it like a job

Ryan Thomas, who runs the Polaris Factory Racing team, puts it bluntly. "It may look cool if you got stickers, but it's cooler if you get paid to race. You don't get paid to race if you don't treat it like a job," he said at the Off-Road Sponsorship Summit. "When you're vying for dollars from brands, you have to be better than first. You have to be first plus, you know, another 10%." ▶ Watch Ryan Thomas on treating it like a job

Thomas reminded racers why they get paid at all: "Ultimately they're supposed to help sell a product or a service." And he closed with authenticity: "I think you need to live the life that you represent or that you're supposed to represent, and if you don't live that life, it's not going to work." ▶ Watch the full session

Time it for the fall and meet in person

Polaris runs on the calendar year. "Q3 is a really important time for sponsorship, I would say, anywhere from August through, you know, October," Carpenter said. That's when Polaris builds budgets and works through decks. If you catch his eye early, his usual reply is to "feel free to send me your update throughout the year and I'll kind of keep track, and then let's touch base this fall." ▶ Watch the interview

He'd rather meet you face to face, ideally at a race. His advice: go to races "whether they're racing or not, and walking through tech." At SEMA, a quick hello and something small to remember you by beats a binder: "It's going to be really tough to nail down an hour long meeting at a show like SEMA." ▶ Watch the interview

Once you get support, don't turn it into a running tab. Carpenter described an entry-level racer who started emailing "with a little bit of a handout kind of a mentality of, you know, how can you help me next?" His response: "You got to respect my time." ▶ Watch the interview

Your checklist for Polaris

• Decide whether you're pitching as a racer, an ambassador or both, and set deliverables to match.
• Find a class or region where Polaris lacks strong representation and pitch that gap.
• Keep the deck short: a clean bio, recent results and a two-to-three-year roadmap.
• Clean up your social media. Polaris treats it as your resume.
• Build consistent results in smaller series before asking for a factory-level deal.
• Send updates during the season and get your proposal in from August through October.
• Treat your program like a business, and respect the time of the people who back you.