The Obligations Involved with Car Racing

Video Transcript

"TINA STULL: Hi, I'm Tina Stull, and I drive the Top Dragster for Interstate Batteries. On behalf of Expert Village, I want to talk to you about sponsorship in the world of racing. When it comes to sponsorship, there are some things to consider. A lot of people think, "Great, free money." Well, what you need to realize is with the benefit of having financial support, you also have additional obligations. It is great to be able to have a long-term budget and know how much you have and how many races you can go to and be able to plan that out but on the other thing, you need to consider that a lot of that money that you get will probably go back into supporting that sponsorship. In my case, it's about 20%. When--the nice thing about with sponsors is you get additional opportunities for exposure. A lot of times, they'll open the doors for me with the Interstate. There are a couple of events that they support that I get to go to and take my car and I wouldn't have that exposure if I didn't have that sponsorship. And so, there are a lot of great things that can come out of it but also at the track now, you have people to take care of if they come and they're the VIPs of any of the sponsors or the sponsors arrive and there is--you need to build into your budget or build into your time schedule to make sure that you are able to take care and host them whether it would be. A lot of times, you're going to feed them, you're going to give them water and all that and you don't want to be caught at the track where you're trying to race and you have this happening over here and you're trying to do both. You really need to realize that with the sponsorship, you're going to need a little additional help."