Champ Car Sets New Commercial Television Exposure Records

After a new television package delivered record-setting exposure for its commercial partners in 2005, the Champ Car World Series spent much of its preseason planning for ways to increase its return on investment for its ever-growing list of corporate partners and sponsors.

The 2006 year-end Joyce Julius Sponsor Report showed that the efforts paid large dividends for North America’s top open-wheel series, with exposure value, sponsor mentions and exposure time all setting new records for the Champ Car World Series.

Overall exposure value for series and team sponsors totaled $120,677,985 in 2006, an increase of nearly 22 percent over last year’s record-setting numbers. The exposure value calculated by the Joyce Julius reports is based on exposure time and mentions multiplied by an estimated cost per 30-second commercial rate. The rates were also calculated to reflect the network airing the broadcast, which in 2006 included live broadcasts on NBC, CBS Sports and SPEED as well as race replays on SPEED.

“We saw in 2005 that our television package gave us the potential to provide unprecedented exposure for our sponsors," said Champ Car World Series President Steve Johnson. “To see the work that our broadcast department put into improving the product in 2006 pay off in such big increases, shows our commercial partners that Champ Car is a strong delivery platform for their products and services."

Continued gains were also made in sponsor mentions and exposure time, setting series records in both of those areas as well. Thanks to innovations in camera placement, both in the car and around the race circuit, in-focus sponsor exposure time was nearly doubled in 2006 to more than 116 hours. Total sponsor mentions also increased more than 80 percent.

Champ Car Presenting Sponsor Bridgestone received the greatest amount of exposure on series broadcasts in 2006, receiving value of more than $29 million through company mentions, exposure of its logo, mentions of the Potenza racing tire and the Bridgestone Pole Award. The Ford Motor Company was second on the list with $25.6 million in exposure through graphics, appearance on the cars and the use of Ford vehicles in the Fast Lap Pace Car Program.

RuSPORT sponsor CDW earned the most exposure among the team sponsors with more than $5.7 million just for CDW, while team associate sponsors HP, Edge, Targus, Plantronics and Oracle earned a combined $7 million. Indeck was second among team primary sponsors as the Forsythe Championship Racing sponsor gained more than $4 million in exposure while Newman/Haas Racing sponsor McDonald’s increased its exposure in 2006 to more than $3.6 million.

Team sponsors Mi-Jack, Aussie Vineyards and Gulfstream each received more than $1 million in exposure value for their partnerships with Champ Car race teams as did event sponsors Molson and Toyota as well as series partner Roshfrans. Team sponsors topping the $500,000 mark included Bell Micro, Sonny’s Bar-B-Q, Tide, Wellbox and JLG. Champ Car