Menu
NASCAR is losing a major sponsor from its list of Premier Partners. Geico, the insurance company, will depart its five-season Premier Partner sponsorship from NASCAR. Is this loss a sign of future struggles for the sports Premier Partner program?
.@GEICO will end its premier partnership with @NASCAR after this season, marking the first time the racing circuit will lose one of the top-tier sponsors from the system it started in 2020. https://t.co/f89f5oEBol
— Adam Stern (@A_S12) September 20, 2024
NASCAR’s Premier Partner program debuted in 2020. It replaced NASCAR’s traditional title sponsor program after Monster Energy dropped its sponsorship.
A title sponsor was typically the name in the phrase “NASCAR __ Cup Series.” Winston was the original title sponsor, followed by Nextel and then Sprint. However, NASCAR ceased using this system at the Cup Series level following 2019 due to multiple factors, including conflicting sponsors of cars like Sprint and AT&T.
However, NASCAR’s lower National Series, the NASCAR Xfinity Series, and Craftsman Truck Series still use this system. Adam Stern of Sports Business Journal reported in the same story as the Geico news that NASCAR’s secondary series sponsor, Xfinity, is attempting to re-up their contract.
Stern said that this new contract could be for a much shorter term. Nonetheless, X, Xfinityfinity is also trying to maintain its premier sponsorship for a much longer term.
So, is this major sponsorship loss a sign of things to come for NASCAR?
So what can NASCAR do to fill this whole left by Geico?
Geico has a history in NASCAR dating back to the early 2000s. However, they made their name sponsoring Germain Racing’s No. 13 entry for 12 seasons in the NASCAR Cup series.
The brand also sponsors the infamous Geico restart zone and Talladega‘s spring race date, the Geico 500. Well, it does seem gloomy. The news of Xfinity staying around is positive, though, in the future, it may not be as the secondary series sponsor; perhaps they will at least be around as a Premier Partner.
Furthermore, the CW, NASCAR’s newest network, announced yesterday via a press release that they had added 25 new advertisements to its NASCAR programming. Adam Stern again reported that these include major brands like Snapchat, Samsung, and Progressive.
Although the sponsors are not directly related to NASCAR, they show that the NASCAR brand is still valuable to advertisers.
While it is unclear who will take Geico’s valuable place in NASCAR, this is a sign of bad things in the future. Rather, it’s just a business move from Geico, and NASCAR, while it’s not an ideal situation, will certainly recover.
What do you think about all this? Let us know on Discord or X what your take is, and don’t forget you can also follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
