Going As Planned, Sponsors Are Getting More Exposure With Number Movement

By: Tom Luttermoser    Image Via: Tom Luttermoser

When NASCAR announced that they would change the placement of the iconic door numbers, naturally, fans panicked. NASCAR is a sport shrouded in tradition, even to a fault. The fans hate and often times resent change even if that change is 100% necessary for the good of the sport and has zero effect on the on track product. The perfect point here, number movement. 

NASCAR proposed so many number placement ideas and even offered a preview at the All-Star Race at Bristol in 2020 by moving the number to just in front of the rear wheel well. They also proposed placing the number (much smaller) on the rear quarter panel and the contingency panel, which is where it ended up. The sanctioning body stated it would give more room and value for the sponsors, and according to a Nielsen analysis, it has.

According to information shared to the teams and Adam Stern at the Sports Business Journal, the added space on the side of the cars has added 15% to sponsorship value. That value is based on TV exposure vs the cost of traditional TV advertisement. Nielsen also stated for teams who usually run outside the Top-10, that 15% value jumped to 36%. The firm said the back running cars “are showing up more than in the past because they have larger branding.” Nielsen uses its Sports Connect TV valuation product that tracks visible logos on surface areas like the hood, side and quarter panels of a car. They then add up the exposures to determine the quality and total on air screen time.

Sports Business Journal surveyed about a dozen team and sponsor execs about the change. Only a couple were neutral about the move, saying it didn’t make a big difference but wasn’t a negative, the majority agreed that it was a positive.

Paul Zindrick, vice president of corporate partnerships for JTG Daugherty Racing said, “The end result from what I’m seeing is our sponsors are saying, ‘Wow, we’re getting a lot more for our investments,’ so that’s generating a lot more excitement and enthusiasm around our current sponsor set.”

One of the best examples of using the space has almost always been Anheuser-Busch, parent company of Budweiser and Busch beer products, and the Gen 7 car has been no different. Two weekends ago at Michigan International Speedway, they used the extra space to push their social media promotion #BuschelOfBusch. The hashtag took up the entire side of the car, which, got the best possible exposure doing burnouts on the front stretch.