[Fot] Sponsorship of Vintage Racing

[James Gray]

You could be right Bill. I understand how things can spiral out of
control. As far as catering is concerned I was planning on catering for
the sponsors guests only.
Tent passes would be issued and limited to 30 or so.Watkins Glen has no
problem with that, I just have to clear it with SVRA.
The Saturday FoT party in our pit is on me and lasts until the beer runs
out. The sponsor will have people there to manage and entertain their
guests with me popping in and out as I attend to my own racing issues.
Plus there will be others there that could represent the " the team" and
help with the sponsor.
It sounds like your event was much larger anything I'm planning. Again,
you may be right as I have not heard from all my prospective suppliers
for catering, graphics & RV rental yet.I don't want to over commit and
will try to be conservative. I will find that book you refered to and if
things start to get too complex then I will bag the idea. 
By profession I am a construction project manager so I will certainly
apply my planning, budgeting and risk management skills to the project
with guarded opitimism. 
Keep it simple ( as it can be ). If you spent $40K that must have been
one hell of an event, how many people did you entertain?
Jim G

-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Babcock [mailto:BillB at bnj.com] 
Sent: Friday, November 02, 2007 9:50 PM
To: Bill Babcock; James Gray
Cc: fot at autox.team.net
Subject: RE: [Fot] Sponsorship of Vintage Racing



I probably should just let this lie, but I hate to see a fellow FOTer
walking into a buzz saw.

Having done marketing for most of my adult life, I'll tell you that's a
lot of work for $5K. And that's not because marketers are overpaid--it's
work even when you're good at it. If you could do a catered hospitality
tent for that then more power to you, never mind the rest. I've done a
race for two years (the Columbia River Classic here in Portland) and
acquired sponsors for charity. We collected about $50K in sponsorships
and counted ourselves lucky to clear $10K for the charity. Even though
we had food donations we didn't have enough, and people went hungry.
Good thing we had lots of Kona beer. I had to personally donate $5K for
the raffle prize to clear that (it wasn't unexpected). I'm not trying to
discourage you, just to tell you that it's a heck of a lot of work and
more expenses everywhere than you'd expect. One small example--most
tracks have concessionaires. Doing your own catering can be a challenge,
hiring a caterer is absolutely out. You have to use the concessionaire,
and that's expensive and not good. Tracks and racing organizations
expect to get a piece of anything commercial. It's tricky to fly under
that radar without setting up a confrontation that can be very
embarrassing for your sponsor, so you have to cross all the I's and dot
the T's.

There is a book on how to manage sponsorship for racing--I never bought
it but I flipped through it. I'd start there with someone who has
already gone through the grief.

The problem with these kind of things is that there is a huge difference
between entertaining a few friends at the track informally, and trying
to do something similar for money. The stakes and the complexities rise
exponentially, and if you can't get enough budget to actually do it
right, then it fails. I've done these kind of things with professionals
helping me (indispensable) and I'm pretty good at a number of the
elements myself, and I'd tell you everything is much harder than you
think, takes ten times longer and costs five times more.

Give it a go, but be careful, and do your best not to set expectations
you can't meet.