What happened: After months of speculation, NASCAR and Monster Energy announced a one-year extension of the Cup Series title sponsorship. Monster’s deal was up at the end of this season, but it will now run through 2019.
What it means: Monster seemed to have all the leverage after reportedly requesting two extensions on its decision deadline. It already had the Cup Series sponsorship at a steal of a price in the original deal (at least compared to Sprint) and since has spent parts of two seasons as a relatively quiet sponsor. When NASCAR and Monster first announced the deal in December 2016 at a hastily arranged news conference in Las Vegas, there was talk of a culture change and injection of Monster’s youthful, “fun” approach into all things NASCAR. But that hasn’t happened. Today’s NASCAR is the same as it was when Sprint was around, and aside from a Monster display area and Monster girls in victory lane, the sponsor has had little impact on NASCAR itself. Nevertheless, it was crucial for NASCAR to try and extend the deal, because the optics would have been terrible had there been yet another title sponsor change after just two years. At this point, the value of the naming rights themselves seem diminished compared to a decade ago, which could be why NASCAR told reporters it is looking at a different model starting in 2020. It might just be better to try something else than to engage in an annual dance of will-they-or-won’t-they when it comes to signing a new deal, and that seems to be the direction NASCAR may go.
News value: Six. It’s above average because it’s the series title sponsorship, but there’s a lot of fatigue around this story since it dragged on for so long. It would have been much bigger news at this point had Monster decided not to come back, because NASCAR would have been in a real bind.
Three questions: What was the holdup in signing the deal that prevented Monster from meeting the original deadline last December? What other options would NASCAR have had if this deal hadn’t been worked out? Will Monster do anything to increase its role, or will its investment stay relatively the same over the remaining two seasons of its sponsorship?
I appreciate Monster’s support and glad their here for next year. Monster is the only energy drink for me. That being said if they would step up their presence at the track I think it could be better for all.
Well, at least we will still get free full size Monster cans while attending races.
Why would Monster increase presence now? Its a lame duck season. Probably stay the same or decrease.
I say good riddance!!!
I’ve been ticked off for a while now, the way they’ve been dragging their feet. All they’ve done is blow smoke about how “NASCAR” has helped “their” brand. In my eyes they’ve treated them like the red headed step child. I was hoping NASCAR would be able to tell them where to stick their Monster Energy size can. I don’t drink energy drinks but I can guarantee one thing if I ever decide to drink one it sure as hell won’t be theirs ????????????!!
At some point someone better wake up and realize that young people are not “car people” like previous generations. Almost all of the races are too long! There should not be any 600 or 500 mileraces or races exceeding 3 hours if you want any possibility of young people watching.
What difference is it going to make to reduce the races by 200 miles. The reason NASCAR is in this fix is because they have tried to please everyone. Car culture has changed, people don’t look at cars the way we did in the 60- 80’s . The only chance we have is that the racing media quit bashing the sport they cover by always pointing out the negatives, and tracks lower the prices to lure people back. I still say that as far as excitement goes, racing is far ahead of any other sports to attend.
All the talk has been about the “young” racers/demographics and stabilizing our fan base. We are swimming upstream if millennials are that demographics! It might be time to STABILIZE our SPORT instead of our fan base! Old folks like me don’t have it anymore to GO TO RACES! Traffic, grandstands, bathrooms just don’t work easily for us! We need the generation AFTER the millennials to begin to grow again! For now just “float” WELL and it will turn!