Recap the season so far for me, please?

Okay, I really was into the 2009 season and Rowdy for the first 2 months of the season.

But then life got in the way. I've caught a few laps here and there, read the recaps and standings but other than that, I'm lost.

But I'm trying to catch up. Starting with the past few Rowdy podcasts.

So Rowdy folks, care to help me out. What, in your mind, are the 3 things I should know about this season.
(Other than Penske buying Saturn. And Poole's passing.)

Thanks so very much.

PS - Feel free to tweet me too.
twitter.com/baierman

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• Help

Penske Buys Saturn? Saturn to NASCAR?

It was announced today that Roger Penske has an agreement to buy the Saturn brand from GM.

This is a shock to me. But I guess he's got a lot more money stocked away. And big, big plans for how to save this car brand.

Of course, I immediately wondered if he planned to bring Saturn to NASCAR - that's probably a decade away and lots of expense he doesn't want to incure, but it's nice to speculate, eh?

read the story here:
http://tinyurl.com/qtqukp

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• Penske

NASCAR is a pre-schoolers best friend!!!!

I am finally getting to watch races this season.
Know why?
I got my daughter into the races by practicing her numbers as the cars go by.
My wife may not like it but my daughter digs it.
We practice counting and addition as they show each car. I'm teaching her the drivers as the whiz by the camera.

No luck getting her to like Kenseth though. She's for Kyle Busch. It's the M&Ms!!!
If their was a Dora car, she'd love that!

Lets hope this works for baseball season too!

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The Onion on Kenseth...

Oh man, this is good.

http://www.theonion.com/content/infograph/matt_kenseth

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• Kenseth

I love the rain! Matt does too!!

After getting wrecked the last few years at the end the race, this year the rain wrecked everyone elses chances.
MK takes Daytona!!
Work be damned. Rain be damned, I'll take this W!

How bout it Kenseth fans - what a great way to start 09.

Now if I could only at that ol' CCR song out of my head

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• MK, Kenseth

Another dammit for Daytona!

For the 4th straight year I've got to work on Sunday.
Once again I've got to settle for uneven web updates and trackpass.
I've tried following the ESPN & NASCAR updates on the web during the race but does anyone have other suggestions?
Is there a live audio feed I can plug into? Does PRN do anything.
Help! I don't want to miss the race (and hopefully not see MK wreck on the last lap again!)
Thanks

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Dear Cutler, Bass & Buck...

Since you guys were joking about the technical aspects of your business on the outro yesterday I thought I'd ask...Any plans for an Rowdy iPhone app?

As of now I only see a few NASCAR related in the apple app store and they're not from the company I like -namely Rowdy!

Seems like it might be a good place to spread content or even give up to date race info - some apps let you live blog a race.

PS - The podcast sounds great on the iphone too!

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For the ladies of Rowdy...

Drivers go shirtless...

I stumbled upon this photostream on flickr today that features lots of NASCAR drivers shirtless. See candid party shots of jeff gordon, Jr., JJ, Clint and Kasey.

Not my cup of tea but...

http://flickr.com/photos/14034434@N02/1575002797/in/photostream/

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Biffle, Boyer tidbit

Just had lunch with a friend of mine who was working on a Nascar ad campaign which will promote local tracks. Biffle & Boyer star in the spots.

He said when Boyer got off his helicopter he asked for a beer.
They had none on set so they went out and got him some.
Classic.

• 0 Comments
• Clint Boyer

Sponsor Exodus From Nascar Nation

This may have been covered by someone else or on the podcast, I forget. Anyway, this article was posted on adage.com and it's about the sorry state of NASCAR sponsorship. Thought I'd share it.
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Once-unstoppable Nascar is hitting a wall as its fan base erodes, race attendance declines, TV ratings slip, the auto industry implodes and economically stressed marketers slam the brakes on sponsorships. The pileup is so big that Nascar, long held up as the gold standard in sports marketing due to its followers -- fiercely loyal to the sport and its sponsoring brands -- had to lay off 1,000 employees and is fretting over whether it could actually lose money next year.

CEO Brian France, speaking last week in New York at its big year-end promotional event, Champions Week, said Nascar won't see increased sponsorship revenue in 2009 -- a seemingly unthinkable turn of events for a sport that added $150 million in sponsorship dollars last year. "Next year, we will not obviously make that kind of a gain," he warned, then added, "The question is, are we going to back up?"

Of Nascar's 42 full-time drivers, 12 currently do not have primary sponsors for the 2009 season, which begins in less than 10 weeks with the Daytona 500. Primary sponsors pay $18 million to $20 million to be featured as the main logo for all 38 races on a driver's car, such as DuPont does with Jeff Gordon. Running nearly a third of its cars without a major sponsor is a huge problem, since under its team business model, at least 75% of the budget comes from sponsors.

"I don't think it's necessarily an indictment of the value of a Nascar sponsorship as much as it is the fact that it's more expensive than ever to do business with Nascar," said Mel Poole, president of SponsorLogic, a sports consultancy in Charlotte, N.C. "Primary sponsors who spend $20 million to put the sticker on the car are spending just as much, if not double or triple that, in media support to leverage that."

According to an Advertising Age analysis of TNS Media Intelligence figures, advertisers spent $538.8 million on TV ads surrounding Nascar programming from January through September of this year, down from $567.2 million in the same time period in 2007.

Old friends
And two Nascar marketing staples have left. Eastman Kodak ended a 22-year relationship, while Sears Roebuck, hard hit by the economic downturn and anemic retail sales, decided to end its 13-year title sponsorship of the Craftsman Truck Series after this year.

"Just as we have transformed our company, we are transforming our marketing," said Kodak's Betty Noonan, VP-corporate marketing and branding. Kodak said it is concentrating most of its business on digital cameras, and is putting more of its sports marketing dollars into golf, whose audience demographic is far more lucrative than Nascar's.

"Nobody appreciates sponsors more than us," said the VP-business development of a Nascar team who asked not to be identified. (Indeed, the sport did sign on a number of sponsors in 2008, among them Wrigley and Best Buy.) "But you look around as you're trying to form partnerships, and you look at who's leaving, and it's just disheartening."

It's not only sponsors that are abandoning Nascar; fans are too. This is the third consecutive season it has suffered from declining TV ratings and third straight year track attendance has fallen -- down some 9% from last season.

According to a Sports Business Journal report, even Nascar's legendary brand loyalty among fans is down. Of more than 400 race fans who were surveyed by the publication, only 42% said they were "much more likely" or "somewhat more likely" to trust a particular product or service that is an official sponsor of Nascar, down nearly 13 percentage points from the responses to the same question in 2007.

No downshift?
For its part, Nascar maintains it's still on track. "While we're not immune to the downturn, by many measures and just about every important metric, we are in a strong position," said Andrew Giangola, VP-business communications. "We're still the second-highest- rated sports programming on TV, and while attendance is down, we still average about 120,000 fans per race."

Indeed, Nascar is No. 2 to the National Football League by most measures, except for sponsorship revenue. The NFL pulls in about $1.2 to 1.5 billion per year compared with Nascar's $3 billion; in third place is Major League Baseball, followed by the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League.

As for the layoffs, Mr. Giangola said to "consider the context," noting, "You had several years of very strong growth. Then Nascar made some changes with the new car [introducing the more efficient Car of Tomorrow]. We believe some of [the layoffs] would have happened anyway. With the [Car of Tomorrow] you need fewer fabricators, fewer engineers, there's less labor costs. ... But, certainly, it's been exacerbated by the [economic] situation."

Moreover, the death throes of the Big Three domestic automakers could have drastic consequences for Nascar: 32 of the 42 full-time teams for 2009 drive Chevys, Fords or Dodges. (The other 10 are Toyota, which saw unit sales fall 34% in November). General Motors Corp. already reduced sponsorship at 12 tracks last year to seven in 2008. According to reports, Ford Motor Co. canceled its pre-banquet party in New York last week, GM canceled its post-banquet party and representatives from Chrysler weren't even in attendance at the celebration.

GM has already publicly said everything is on the table when it comes to cuts. "We're obviously watching the situation very closely," Mr. Giangola said. "We're hopeful and optimistic that Congress will help the automakers. The domestic automakers have been a part of our tradition and history."

But if the Big Three disintegrate or scale back on Nascar, there doesn't appear to be another foreign company ready to jump in. Honda announced last week that it is pulling out of Formula 1 racing, a shocking development.

• 0 Comments
• Sponsor, nascar nation