After the Daytona 500, I wrote that Ryan Newman's win in the Alltel carwas disasterous to the Sprint brand which is spending--by way of their acquisition of Nextel--roughly $70 million a year to be the title sponsor of NASCAR's top series.
I couldn't believe that I actually got e-mails from people saying I was making a big deal out of nothing. Oh yeah? Well, the fine people at Joyce Julius & Associates, the sponsorship evaluation company, just sent me an e-mail. They calculated that Newman's win at Daytona was worth $18.3 million to ALLTEL, thanks to ALLTEL logos getting 17 minutes and 38 seconds during the Fox race coverage.
I have no idea the value that Sprint received other than 21 seconds of exposure time thanks to Newman, but suffice it to say that you don't pay $70 million to have a competitor get the bang that ALLTEL received.
The bottom line is that when Nextel signed the deal, they should have either kicked all competitors out of the sport or received a discount.
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