NHRA Title Sponsor Switching from POWERade to Full Throttle in 2009
Written by David Lamm · April 25, 2008
In an announcement made jointly by the NHRA and the Coca-Cola corporation, the POWERade brand will be replaced by Coca-Cola’s energy drink brand, Full Throttle, as title sponsor of the NHRA’s professional series in 2009. The announcement also revealed the deal includes a two-year partnership extension through the 2013 season and the new series will be called the NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series. For the sake of the sport of NHRA drag racing, let’s hope the Full Throttle brand managers take this sponsorship more seriously than the POWERade brand managers did.
NHRA.com: Full Throttle energy drink to rev up with title sponsorship of NHRA series
In a conference call conducted at 1 pm eastern, NHRA President Tom Compton and a Coca-Cola/Full Throttle representative made some brief statements and answered a handful of questions regarding the sponsorship. No mention was made regarding increasing the race purses or the payouts to the champions. The media was assured that the Full Throttle brand will make this sponsorship the cornerstone of their marketing efforts and that NHRA will be front and center in future marketing efforts. Compton clarified that race teams that currently have sponsorships with competing energy drinks, i.e. Tommy Johnson Jr.’s Monster Energy Drink Dodge Charger R/T and Jerry Toliver’s Rockstar Dodge Charger R/T, will be grandfathered into this sponsorship agreement. Race teams with deals with competing products currently in place will be allowed to extend those contracts so long as there is no break in continuous sponsorship. No new sponsorships from competing brands will be allowed to enter the sport that are not currently involved as of this weekend. Also, sports drinks like Gatorade or Vitamin Water may sponsor naming rights of individual races and race teams in 2009 and 2010.
To editorialize, this sponsorship looks good on the surface in that an energy drink fits the NHRA demographic and the overall spirit of competition more than a sports drink. No matter how much of a perfect fit this looks like on paper, the real test will be the amount of money and marketing Full Throttle puts behind its sponsorship. Increasing individual race payouts is a great start. Paying both Top Fuel and Funny Car champions $1 million each will help elevate the sport to new levels. In all honesty, you can not have a sport where one crash or one explosion can cost a race team $150,000 yet only pay the champion $500,000 at the end of the year.
Hopefully the Full Throttle brand managers will learn from the way Winston activated their sponsorship of the NHRA and not follow the lackadaisical approach POWERade took. Time will tell.
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