It sounds like Monster Energy will be the last NASCAR Cup Series sponsor
By Nick Tylwalk
Monster Energy is sticking around to have its name on the top NASCAR series for 2019, but don’t expect it to be there for 2020 — or any other company, for that matter.
When it comes to the NASCAR Cup Series and its sponsorship future, Tuesday brought both good news and weird news. The good was that Monster Energy had finally renewed its deal to stick around as the title sponsor for the series, meaning fans, journalists and teams haven’t learned to say the unwieldy Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series for nothing.
The weird news was related to that announcement and stemmed from the fact that Monster had only re-upped for one season, through 2019. Does that mean the sport is in for more drama like it experienced over the last six months? Not exactly, as NASCAR instead expects that it will not have a title sponsor in 2020 and beyond as it envisions “bundling its top sponsorship packages with the sanctioning body to include the tracks and television partners and possibly will not include the series naming rights as have been used in the past.”
That’s a lot to wrap one’s head around, but it means that yes, the NASCAR Cup Series will probably not be named for a company after next year. As the Charlotte Observer explains, it will simply be called the NASCAR Cup Series or NASCAR Premier Series or something relatively generic but straightforward. As far as the “bundling” goes, that refers not to home and auto or internet and TV but rather something that would attach a corporate name to segments of the season, like the NASCAR Goes West races could be called the “NASCAR Cup Series presented by Progressive” and then other companies would rotate in later.
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(As an aside, it’s natural to wonder if this could be a test balloon for doing the same thing at the XFINITY Series and Camping World Truck Series levels too, though those undoubtedly cost much less to sponsor and thus are probably easier for NASCAR to fill.)
Because NASCAR doesn’t make the information public, no one knows exactly what the title sponsorship costs Monster Energy, but it’s commonly thought to be around $20 million a season. That’s money that NASCAR obviously needs to make back somehow beyond next year, but it’s possible it sees a better way to do that with multiple partners than by asking one company to fork over all that dough on its own — kind of like the way most race teams now have a bunch of companies sponsor their cars throughout a season.
As well, though yours truly winces as the term “activation” as marketing speak, it’s undoubtedly easier for any company that wants to partner with NASCAR on the Cup Series to throw its efforts into promoting the sport and being a presence at tracks for a few races at a time than over the course of one of the longest seasons in professional sports. Monster Energy sounds like it wants to be pat of the future, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see it have a hand in whatever the next deal looks like.
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It just won’t be the only player, and that might work out okay. If it doesn’t, expect to see something similar to what just happened play out all over again, with plenty of speculation and hand-wringing about who wants to be the title sponsor of the Cup Series as it rolls into the next decade.