Other Race Funding Ideas

Don't Get Sponsored, Get Funded!

Sponsors. Sponsors. Their logos are plastered everywhere in the world of professional motorsports - on the race cars, hats, team uniforms and driver suits, transporter truck and trailer, painted in the grass of the speedway infield... anywhere and everywhere! When it comes to the top echelons of racing, sponsors pay most of the bills in exchange for the publicity they get by having their name and logo exposed to millions of people. In other words, sponsorship makes the motorsports world go round.

This is true even on the amateur and grassroots level of racing although you won't see many major household brands and names like Home Depot, Sharpie, or FedEx on cars at your local track. You are more likely to find "Jay's Heating & A/C" or "Bob's Garage" on race cars at this level. And if you haven't already checked it out, we have a complete Racing Sponsorship section on how to go about finding and keeping sponsors.

However, for grassroots racing, sponsorship or paying out of your own pocket are not the only ways to fund your racing habit. You may find as you read through the next few articles that some of these alternate race funding ideas may make more sense than sponsorship. Or you may want to do a little of both. And unless you have money to burn, paying out of your own pocket can be a real drag, especially if your pockets are empty.

But first, let's talk about why some of these other funding options may be a better choice for you.

Thus, you are getting paid to race and show off their logo while doing it. It's a pretty good deal, actually. However, as you can imagine getting and keeping sponsors is not always the easiest process in the world. And once you get one, then it's usually a year-by-year deal. It can be much more challenging for a small, amateur team to meet all the needs of the sponsor during the year, especially in the heat of racing season when all your time may just be focused on getting the car ready for the next race. Pro teams usually have a dedicated staff just to handle sponsorship duties on and off the track.

Also, many grassroots and amateur level race teams may not be able to provide sufficient exposure for potential sponsors in comparison to them spending a similar amount of traditional advertising dollars. This is not necessarily any fault of the race team, but some race series today are very costly to compete in and just don't "bring in the crowds." That requires the team to do a whole lot of extra promotional activities beyond the racetrack that just may not be feasible for this level race team.

And lastly, what do you do if the sponsor decides to just pull the plug early or at the end of the race season, and you don't have a backup? When the sponsorship goes - the income goes. Or what if you decide you don't want to race anymore or you have some sort of hardship, and you still have half a season of sponsorship obligations to fulfill? Unless you had these types of contingencies in your sponsorship contract, you may be stuck in a real hard spot.

Now, I don't want to cast too dark a shadow on sponsorship because it really is the backbone of racing. I simply want to highlight some of the pitfalls and provide some alternatives that could help your race team avoid such problems. Again, you may find that a combination of sponsorship and alternate funding methods works best for you - kinda like the ol' "not putting all your eggs in one basket" cliché.

Finally, if you do have aspirations to become a professional race car driver in the future, then you'll definitely have to jump on the sponsorship bandwagon at some point. But these alternate funding sources just maybe what get you to that point.

So anyway, enough of that. Let's press on to why you are reading this - finding Alternatives to Racing Sponsorship. Fortunately, there's tons of ways to pay for your racing and that's going to take us to our first topic: producing income from a business on the web - the perfect business for the racer on the go.