Kyle Busch’s ‘sugar daddy’ is leaving, and his NASCAR future is unsettled | Opinion
The president of MM’s parent company Mars Wrigley, Anton Vincent, talked about the company evolving, becoming “consumer obsessed,” and the need to focus on “consumer interest and other passion points.”
“There’s a bit of a shift in our sports marketing strategy,” Vincent told Forbes.com earlier this year. “Our consumer base is very distributive.”
You follow? OK, then allow me to translate: Kyle Busch’s brilliant NASCAR career is in a holding pattern.
“You never anticipate being in this predicament,” Busch said in a Tuesday phone chat.
After 15 years as primary sponsor of Busch’s Cup Series cars, MM’s is gone after this year. A relationship that long is highly uncommon in NASCAR, but eventual breakups happen.
There’s little doubt Kyle Busch will be in a quality car next year and beyond. But it might not be the familiar No. 18 Toyota owned by Joe Gibbs — Busch says he’d prefer to stay where he’s won two championships and truckloads of trophies, and Gibbs obviously wants to keep him.
In any of the other familiar sports leagues, that would basically seal the deal. Kyle and Joe would keep motoring along together.
But big-league auto racing is a very different vehicle. And this particular high-profile development, which reminds everyone how dependent top teams are on corporate partnerships, can hopefully help everyone decide there has to be a better way.
“In other sports, a team doesn’t lose a sponsor and then have to give up its top talent,” Busch said. “Definitely, the business model can stand some help. And I know there are some team owners who have come into our sport recently, and they’re really fighting for that, trying to help that model be better.
“Obviously it’s tough to find that unicorn style of replacement sponsor — someone who spends the $15-to-$25 million in our sport in just a 12-month period.”
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Split decision coming for NASCAR teams
NASCAR’s business model upgraded its wardrobe beginning in 2001, when the first network TV deal kicked in. Prior to that, tracks worked their own individual deals with a variety of networks and cable entities. For the past 21 years, the wall-to-wall deal has generally included two networks splitting the season — right now it’s Fox and NBC.
Is there a fix for NASCAR?
It screams for a structural fix, but it’s not so easy. Other sports do it with salary caps — some are tighter than others. Also, for example, along with the Miami Dolphins’ cut of the NFL’s media revenue, as well as their share of merchandise sales and assorted sponsorships, they sell tens of thousands of tickets and high-end suite packages at home games.