Why Brands Sponsor: Follow the Business, Not the Checkered Flag

If you want a sponsor, start with a question most racers never ask: what is this company actually trying to accomplish? Because the answer is almost never "win races."

Different companies have different needs. Retailers want foot traffic into their stores. Service companies want to generate leads and be top of mind. Manufacturers want to prove functionality — that's why they care about podiums. Beverage and food companies want sampling. Four industries, four completely different reasons to write a sponsorship check — which means four completely different pitches from you. At my Sponsorship Summits, I've asked marketing executives from dozens of brands the same blunt question: why do you sponsor? Their answers should reshape how every racer approaches the next prospect.

"We've got to sell product"

Nobody put it more plainly than Nate Hunt of BFGoodrich Tires, a brand with decades of off-road racing history. "At the end of the day, we're not involved in off-road racing — or racing in general — to win races or to fund some racer's dream of driving a race truck," Hunt told our Summit audience. "We're there to sell tires. We've got to sell product." ▶ Watch the session

Racing gives BFGoodrich three things at once: "It's a great platform to showcase our product, a great platform for us to do R&D for future product, and a great way to market the product and show off the toughness of the tires." ▶ Watch the clip

Notice what's missing from that list: charity. When Hunt evaluates teams, performance matters more than exposure — everybody in off-road already knows BFGoodrich. "We're looking for somebody that can elevate our brand, who can bring authenticity to the brand." ▶ Watch the clip

The racetrack as R&D lab

Kyle Kietzmann, president of BELL Racing and OMP, has watched sponsorship evolve from "filing cabinets full of decks" to something far more strategic. "Now our sponsorships are more based on series sponsorships, team sponsorships, partnerships, and sponsorships with professional drivers — and in many cases those sponsorships also involve R&D, because we're constantly trying to improve the products," he said. ▶ Watch the session

His best example: "One athlete we've worked a long time with is Brad Keselowski. We worked with Brad very closely to develop a brand-new helmet for NASCAR that was used last year in almost 50% of the field." When Keselowski became a principal and owner at RFK Racing, "that relationship expanded into us having an official partnership on the racewear side with OMP." ▶ Watch the session

A racer who can genuinely help a manufacturer test, break, and improve product is offering something money can't easily buy. If you're pitching a parts maker, your feedback loop may be worth as much as your fender space.

Proving grounds and product launches

For an automaker, racing is where marketing and engineering meet. Matthew Winter, global off-road marketing manager at Ford Performance, connects sponsorship dollars directly to the showroom: "We're trying to promote a lot of our consumer products. We have probably one of the most compelling lineups in our history — three different Raptors in our lineup, the reintroduction of Bronco." ▶ Watch the clip

Big pushes often follow big launches. "We definitely put a big push behind what we were doing with Bronco when that was coming out in 2020. We wanted it to be a proving ground — a lot of testing — and we wanted to back up what we were saying," Winter said. And the effort doesn't stop after launch: "We're still out there racing Broncos four years later. We had three Broncos cross the finish line last week. We want customers to know that the things we have out there are constantly being improved, constantly being developed." ▶ Watch the clip

For racers, the timing lesson is gold: budgets swell around product launches. Know what a brand is launching next year, and you know where its sponsorship money is headed.

Buying into a community, not a billboard

Then there are the lifestyle brands, where sponsorship is less about product demonstration and more about belonging. Joe Parsons — "Monster Joe" to the off-road world — explained why Monster Energy has poured so much into off-road racing when it could market a beverage anywhere.

"The off-road world is a community, and we've been able to really live our brand's lifestyle within those communities," Parsons said. "The off-road community was very close to me — I was already a member of it, growing up around the likes of Robby Gordon. It was the Orange County culture: take the family camping out to the desert, go to the Supercross races. 'What are you doing this weekend? Let's go play in the desert.' It really fit us. Everyone that worked for the company — it was a language that we understood."

You can't fake your way into that kind of sponsorship with impressions data. Lifestyle brands sponsor people who authentically live where their customers live.

The takeaway

Before you call a company, know what business they're in, who their customer is, what that customer considers value, and how the company's products reach them — direct to consumer, through retailers, through distributors. A racer who understands that Boxo USA sells direct while Optima Batteries sells through retail shelves will write two very different proposals — and both will land better than the copy-paste deck that talks only about lap times.

Brands sponsor to sell product, to develop product, to launch product, and to live inside a community of customers. Figure out which of those your program serves, lead with it, and you'll stop sounding like a racer asking for money — and start sounding like marketing they can't buy anywhere else.