NASCAR announced Thursday that Camping World will replace Craftsman as title sponsor of its truck racing series beginning in 2009.
The seven-year deal, estimated to be worth between $5 million and $7 million annually, expands Camping World’s presence in NASCAR. It can target the owners of recreational vehicles, who make up a large portion of the auto racing fan base.
“You don’t have to go very far looking around the facilities at a NASCAR race to see all the various people that tailgate and camp and so on,” NASCAR CEO Brian France said. “Camping World has become now a very valuable partner for them. … They know the camper as well as anybody in the country. So there’s a lot of good reasons why Camping World is going to be a good fit for the Truck Series.”
Craftsman had been the sole sponsor of the truck series since its creation in 1995.
Camping World is already the title sponsor of the sport’s developmental series and Sprint Cup races at Dover and Kansas. It also sponsors the Kevin Harvick Inc. No. 33 truck, driven by Ron Hornaday Jr. But the expansion of its NASCAR involvement comes as many companies, including automakers, have cut back on their involvement in the sport, citing financial troubles.
Dodge and Ford recently announced they would not support truck teams next season. And the truck series, like other NASCAR segments, has seen a decline in the number of teams financially able to compete on a weekly basis.
Camping World CEO Marcus Lemonis said the company has seen a 9 percent decline in sales this year, and it sought the title sponsorship as a way to broaden its marketing strategy.
“Because of the product offering, everything ranging from RV sales to rentals, we needed a forum where we could spend an affordable percentage of our total marketing spend on branding,” Lemonis said. “So when we look at the rifle shot, we know we can’t afford to buy a TV spot on [Fox] on American Idol, but we know with the limited amount of branding that we can afford to spend that we need to keep it so close to where we believe that crossover of consumer is, which is why NASCAR makes sense.”
NASCAR estimated that Camping World would get $100 million worth of exposure from the sponsorship.
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