Our Tax Money and NASCAR Racing

From Jayski.com:

Army Official says sponsorships worth money: The U.S. Army will pay Stewart-Haas Racing $11.6 million to sponsor Ryan Newman's #39 car for 23 races this season, and the Army official who oversees it says the money is worth it. Army and National Guard (#88-Dale Earnhardt Jr.) were the only branches of the military that served as primary sponsors for cars in Saturday's NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Richmond International Raceway. Lt. Gen. Benjamim Freakley said the Army looks at different ways to determine if the sponsorship is worthwhile but admits it comes down to one thing. "At the end of the day, for the Army, it's does someone join the Army or not," Freakley said. He said 41 people agreed Saturday at the Army's booth at the track to be interviewed by an Army recruiter. "That's powerful," Freakley said. Army sponsorship is a year-to-year agreement. Because Congress controls the money that goes to the military, the budget can fluctuate from year to year. That, Freakley says, makes it challenging to do multi-year deals. He said he won't know his budget until this summer. He said he and his group have started to assess the sponsorship and what they want to do for 2010 but no decisions have been made.

Are any sponsorships "worth the money?" In my opinion, no. Most are hoaxes perpetrated by Madison Avenue. Corporations waste billions each year on advertising, be it NASCAR or the Superbowl. In the case of the military branches I see not reason for them to spend millions on NASCAR sponsorships. Over the last several years most, if not all of the various branches, have bought sponsorships in race teams and wasted those millions of tax dollars.

The Army rep. says that 41 people signed up at their booth. They pay $11 million to have a booth? I know that NASCAR is a money hog, but surely something could be worked out for the military to recruit at races without paying millions for the opportunity. The NASCAR world usually trends to the right politically, or so it claims, so there should be no problem with military recuiting on site.

My guess is that recruiters would do the same amount of business at NASCAR races even if they did not have a team sponsorship. Twenty-two million dollars would buy a lot of body armor for our soldiers in harms way. I certainly hope that the President's people will take a long look at the value of this activity and force the military branches to put it to a much better use.