Joyce Julius: Motorsport TV highlights for 2006

The Unique Top Team Sponsor of Year Award goes to… the casual-dining restaurant chain Ruby Tuesday, the financial backer of Alex Job Racing’s entries in the 2006 Grand American Rolex Sports Car Series. The first year sponsor out-earned the other 96 team-sponsoring brands, collecting 28% of the exposure value garnered by the entire group.

Craftsman windshield identity appeared clear and in-focus during 4% of the total broadcast time devoted to the 2006 NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series (including commercials). The windshield logos were the most-monitored, non-television graphic exposure source present in the series. Incidentally, Chevrolet truck identity was next (excluding graphics), appearing on-screen about 2% of the time.

Target’s exposure domination in the 2006 IRL IndyCar Series saw the retailer amass nearly twice as much on-screen time as the next closest primary team sponsor, while capturing almost 2.5 times as many verbal references. To further the point, Target averaged about $1.2 million of exposure value per IRL event, compared to an average of $960,000 during a typical NASCAR Nextel Cup event telecast.

ARCA RE/MAX Series television exposure rose in all three categories, as on-screen time (66%), mentions (42%) and exposure value (14%) experienced impressive increases. An increase from 14 to 15 televised events, and a complete season of Speed Channel re-airs benefited the series in 2006.

The Grand Prix of San Jose, broadcast by NBC and replayed by Speed Channel, was the number-one television exposure producing event of the 2006 Champ Car World Series campaign with more than $16 million of cumulative exposure value—some 3.5 times more than last year’s total when the event received just a single Speed Channel telecast.

Kevin Harvick’s NASCAR Busch Series driver uniform was worth more than $1 million to his sponsor, the U.S. Coast Guard. Altogether, USGC identity on Harvick’s uniform was monitored for 21:56 during 2006 event broadcasts, some 43% more than the second-ranked driver uniform of Kyle Busch, which prominently featured Lowe’s identity.

Porsche was mentioned more than any other auto manufacturer during 2006 American LeMans Series event telecasts, as the brand was referenced on 581 occasions. Audi was a close second with 469 mentions, followed by Corvette (436), Aston Martin (369), Ferrari (256) and BMW (128).

NBC’s final telecast of the Daytona 500 last February proved to be the single largest telecast for cumulative sponsor exposure of the 2006 NASCAR Nextel Cup Series season, generating $412.3 million of comparable value for the 252 brands monitored during the broadcast. The Coca-Cola 600 ($200.0 million), Pocono 500 ($197.5 million), Dodge/Savemart 350 ($197.2 million) and DirecTV 500 ($189.3 million) rounded out the list of top five exposure-producing event telecasts of the year