Another sponsorship thread.. but needs reading!

[GIXser]

I m guessing that most of us want someone else to pay for their racing. The question to ask is, why should they ? or if you prefer the glass half full.. why shouldn’t they!!

The first question i’d like to ask is what’s in it for the sponsor ? And as it sits currently being in business myself, I really struggle with this!
I came to the following conclusion rightly or wrongly!
While our motorcycling events is run the way they are” there is absolutely nothing in it for a sponsor!

Now let me just put this in before you get all uppity about it.!. This has nothing to do with the organizing of the events , the free time the marshals give up and the countless hours clubs and organizers put in to make an event happen.

It goes deeper than that,it comes to the riders/teams themselves , if we the riders want this sport to flourish the next few years we have to act..otherwise im afraid it willl never be more than club rounds struggling for media attention and riders struggling to find money to fuel their expensive habit .

I believe we can make positive changes, they can be small changes that make all the difference, for example.. team shirts, before you say that’s “wanky” I was at the v8s today and I gotta say they know how to run an event.. all pit crews were proud to wear their shirts , it made them stand out. And be recognized.
Their pit areas were mostly”very tidy.. and spectators are welcome to enter most of them.

Don’t tell me it’s the money cos a shirt is only $20 or 30 bucks, I think we re a scruffy bunch and we can do better there.

Professional looking and tidy pit areas even if it has signage from your local diary or ya mums business. I think we can lift our whole game there.. if you ask.. why bother..?
Well because eventually someone from the media is going to pick up on the professionalism of what we do and start writing articles or even tv.. so you ask why bother again?? Well…….. for sponsor ship?

Furthermore until we get recognized, we can get some of this out in the press say for instance the vmcc, say we all contributed , $50.00 every rider every meeting. About 100 riders or more = $5000. we could pool this together in a advertising fund. And take out some print media, and radio advertising before an event.. and say to people “hey there is bike racing on.. bring the family.. bring a picnic.. and guess what its free..!

After a while youll get crowds.. and people following your racing.. and guess what .. that leads to sponsorship opportunities !??

Again the pool of money above ..say the $5000 x 5 meetings = $25000 .. you can say to a potential sponsor.. they will get some advertising thrown in…

I believe we need to pay at least a hundred a meeting to start. to make a difference. If you can afford to race.. you can afford a hundred bucks I believe.

Please come up with ideas and post them.. if we all work together, we can make this flourish.. if you don’t want to .. ill crawl back under the rock I came from.. and eventually in time to come ill lose my enthusiasm for the sport because we are not helping ourselves!!

[Tony.OK]

Ok dude I'll start..................
I agree we need to do more to help ourselves, but some responsibilty must lie with our governing body. I'm all for trying to tidy things up and have been contacting my local rag( with no responce ) when I think it may have public interest.
How is it that most major MX events get airtime and advertising? I'm sure its not the riders organising it.
Mate quite frankly I'm sick of hearing "if you can afford to race you can........................" , I really can't ! Does that mean I shouldn't be there? Fuk no. Adding money to already stretched budgets is gonna be hard bro.

A simple start may be someone designing a flyer for each round/race whatever, and having on for example the VMCC site so everyone can download and print off to plaster all over the place, little cost, moderate exposure.

[Pussy]

As I have said to you already, Ed.... if I had been one of yours or Sloan's sponsors this year, I would be VERY happy with the way you guys represented me.
The whole look and atmosphere at your pit area at Paeroa was great.
Good points in the above post!

[Quasievil]

Having had done a few sponsorship deals in the past I cant really pin down a actual bennifit other than the standard "cheers man" these days I basically dont sponsor anything as I been burnt a bit to many times.
As a sponsor I expect a few things to happen and it seems that my interests arent really catered for once the leathers or the cash is handed over, I remeber not to many years ago raising about $1300 of cash for a rider who then promptly went and brought a Spidi suit with it..........nice!!

Anyway there is also an argument that if you cant afford to fund your habbit why expect others to.......unless you as a rider can offer definate and tangible bennifits to the sponsor dont even be cheeky enough to ask.

I am impressed currently with LG boys efforts, looks sharp and they take pride in promoting the LG brand with EXTRA EFFORT at every race meeting!! net result is LG as a corporate can see the money is well spent and will consider offering it for another season.

Personally I pay for my racing (except a drop of oil or two)and until I can put something serious on the table to a potential sponsor ie a result, I will continue to fund it, when I cant afford it I wont be racing simple, I promote my interests as a sponsor however even that sometimes doesnt work (cheers Paeroa organisers for not priniting my sponsors on the programme twats!!)

Seems to be alot of discussion on this issue, end of the day tho its a cycle which is hard to break out of, factors such as low media interest, low spectator numbers, little event promotion, as well as low entry numbers all result in little cash into the sport.
Im not sure if the issues raised recently are born from personal financing issues or actual concern for the sport and its exposure, coming at the end of the racing season (of soughts) I suspect the earlier for a few ?

Answers...well there aint any from where im sitting the ulimate answer is MONEY.......but whos? thats the question, for the riders to fund more will be an impossible task which wont work unfortunetly I fear.

Lastly one of the biggest things we have to sought is the division, bikers are all individuals and are only joined together by one organisation that being MNZ who arent exacty the ideal people who we need to raise the sports awareness, alternative ? I dunno, raise the fees a bit and then employ someone to market the sport better (there was word of it dunno what happened) but as a divided group of people other than talking Im not sure what can be done other than coming up with good ideas.........and where will those ideas go ???

Other ideas, mmmmm do a biker parade pre races? (how many joe public even know what a modern race bike looks like)
Pre race promotion is the answer in some respects, punters in the door, thats what its about

fuck its midnight damn it !!

Night all

[Shaun P]

Good idea but how about initially bump up the entry fees per class enough to cover 1 entry per class, then offer a free entry prize to the next round for best presented per combined/class = that may be only $5 extra entry or some industry/local businesses could come on board with gift vouchers for it = advertising for them
Good incentive for getting some team shirts and makin yre ride look gd

[koba]

Other ideas, mmmmm do a biker parade pre races? (how many joe public even know what a modern race bike looks like)
Pre race promotion is the answer in some respects, punters in the door, thats what its about

I like this sort of thinking, it doesn't have to cost alot, if anthing, either.

[roadracingoldfart]

How about a sub group find a way to get display bikes into a mall or shopping annex somewhere , like a Pak-n-Save or whatever to promote an event.
Maybe get the local Palmy radio station to come along with the BBQ and crap as they do at community events and do broadcasts there all day etc.

With regards to the display aspect , we need to get a profile outside the motorcycle crowd that already know about fast bikes and stuff but the Joe public has no idea about the normal racing season but i would hazzard to guess they know about and go to Boxing day or Paeroa or similar. They just need to be retrained that there is a whole lot of racing going on that is free to visit and there is something worthwhile to view when the get there. I doubt that we will have any problem putting on a specticle for a virgin club meeting visitor and then they will tell others what they did on a weekend etc at work on Monday like we all do. Word spreads.
Who would pay an extra few bucks to have Frenchy or someone do a lunch time display ??? I would.

As for what a sponsor gets out of his invested dollar , heaps !
If you google my team sponsors product you get our race results before his own website lol. He was impressed by that and thats one of the reasons he continues to follow up support. There is no sure way to guage exposure but if it can be done at all the dollar invested is worthwhile. When it becomes a situation where the investment cant be seen to return anything it turns into a donation and the gloss is taken away from the program. Directl sales due to exposure is not the total result but if the seed is sown then the job is half way there. How many times do i look at a mail flyer and only notice the L.G items listed in it , now what caused that ?? Hmmmm.
I have lots to say on this subject but am crap at typing and it takes to long to tell the story on here.

My 2c worth
Paul.

[t3mp0r4ry nzr]

I like your style Eddy! I agree that a professional appearance by all racers will make things more attractive to the wider public. In fact I couldnt agree enough.

However, I have an issue of the idea that riders should be funding the infrastructure. In effect, we as contributors, will be paying for sponsership. That is dumb. Or put another way. The riders would be taking the financial risk with no direct reward. It cant theoretically work. It conflicts with so many economic theories. There is a gap in the market, and we are dancing around the issue. In my opinion, the riders shouldnt be taking the financial leap of faith, that leap of faith should appropriately be taken by a CORPORATE entity ie, a business. or a NON-CORPORATE ie, a club/clubs. A business needs to take the financial risk, with the reward being the development of the sport and future advertising revenues. Someone out there needs to use their onw equity, pull their bollocks out and run with the idea.

Speaking of myself. Riding bikes is only a hobby. Sure I love it. But Im not going to cripple myself financially to pursue it. The sport must remain affordable. IF WE ARE TALKING ABOUT $10EACH ADDITIONAL TO ENTRY. A FUND TOWARDS MEDIA, THEN I WOULD HAVE NO HESSITATIONS WITH FRONTING WITH THAT AMOUNT, CALL IT A DONATION IF YOU WILL, FOR THE SPORT. Depends on how much is needed per race, per rider. Im a student, so would rather not have to cut my $30 week alcohol budget (joking!!). The theoritcal $10 each rider would also make more work for the host club who are volunteers. This would increase the scope of their roles and call for greater accountability if the funds were not well appropriated. A lot of repsonsibilities for volunteers. Again, conflict of economic models. There is no perceived reward for money given.

Cheers Eddy, good on you for putting it out there and trying to make the difference. MAybe if we all tryed the same as you we would not be in this mess. But, I myself do not want to fund the developement of the sport as a whole. I will however try and look as pro. as possible.

[Tony.OK]

I've taken this from another thread, I hope Mystic13 doesn't mind, but I think it sums up alot, and the cost to remedy would be virtually nothing, just a little time and forethought by the organisers.

As quoted by Mystic13

As for attendance. Motorcycling just makes it too hard to attend. I attended Round 5 with the family.

For AMCC who run the event. You go to their website to find that round 5, is on at Pukekohe and run by AMCC on the 7th and 8th. AS someone who wants to go that is pretty useless information.

Jumped onto NZSBK. They tell you which day it's on and that it costs $15 for Saturday and $20 for Sunday. I thought bugger that. Ne, wife and three kids under 10 that would be $100.

Paul had left his mobile on the site so I rang him to find kids were free. Most people looking to bring out kids wouldn't know that. I still didn't know what time racing started, what parking cost etc.

I emailed NZSBK and AMCC with some positive suggestions for change. NZSBK got back the next day and will make the changes to the website for future events. I haven't heard rom AMCC.

So the changes I suggested were;

- List the price for days, families, kids, adults and what age a kid is.
- List the start time of the event at least ( a race schedule would be better).
- Tell me how much for parking (and where)
- If I'm riding in from out of town I want to know if there is gear storage, how much and where.

This is what I as a consumer would like to know.

In this day of the web and email ....

It would be easier to get a Superbike through the eye of a needle than to find information on race events it seems.

"Google is my friend" is a belief I have but in this case Google could do little to tell me anything useful about Round 5.

Being at Round 5 was a different story. We had a good day. The food was good. Coffee was better off site. The sound was a little annoying later in the day but all in all a good day out, great weather and not many people there.

________________________________


The sport doesn't so much suffer from a lack of money, but apathy and a clear strategy of "how to" and a lack of customer focus. the NZSBK site had been looked at from the point of view of a customer wanting to come to an event. That should be the easiest information to find. The AMCC site... well... I'm not sure what it's strategy is but when you click on "Race Events" you get two categories in each month "Bucket" and "Other" (Major Road Race Events 2009). That tells me two things the site is for the club members who know what the deal is and just has the dates as a reminder and Buckets are of more interest than anything else.

[GIXser]

Ok dude I'll start..................
I agree we need to do more to help ourselves, but some responsibilty must lie with our governing body. I'm all for trying to tidy things up and have been contacting my local rag( with no responce ) when I think it may have public interest.
How is it that most major MX events get airtime and advertising? I'm sure its not the riders organising it.
Mate quite frankly I'm sick of hearing "if you can afford to race you can........................" , I really can't ! Does that mean I shouldn't be there? Fuk no. Adding money to already stretched budgets is gonna be hard bro.

A simple start may be someone designing a flyer for each round/race whatever, and having on for example the VMCC site so everyone can download and print off to plaster all over the place, little cost, moderate exposure.

Your right a flyer would be great, but your comment earlier about the streched budget , and trust me , i believe you dude... is the crox of it.. we are in a different league.., to run a porshe for the day is 20 k ..as long as nothing goes wrong ... we argue over a hundred bucks !!

I like your style Eddy! I agree that a professional appearance by all racers will make things more attractive to the wider public. In fact I couldnt agree enough.

However, I have an issue of the idea that riders should be funding the infrastructure. In effect, we as contributors, will be paying for sponsership. That is dumb. Or put another way. The riders would be taking the financial risk with no direct reward. It cant theoretically work. It conflicts with so many economic theories. There is a gap in the market, and we are dancing around the issue. In my opinion, the riders shouldnt be taking the financial leap of faith, that leap of faith should appropriately be taken by a CORPORATE entity ie, a business. or a NON-CORPORATE ie, a club/clubs. A business needs to take the financial risk, with the reward being the development of the sport and future advertising revenues. Someone out there needs to use their onw equity, pull their bollocks out and run with the idea.

Speaking of myself. Riding bikes is only a hobby. Sure I love it. But Im not going to cripple myself financially to pursue it. The sport must remain affordable. IF WE ARE TALKING ABOUT $10EACH ADDITIONAL TO ENTRY. A FUND TOWARDS MEDIA, THEN I WOULD HAVE NO HESSITATIONS WITH FRONTING WITH THAT AMOUNT, CALL IT A DONATION IF YOU WILL, FOR THE SPORT. Depends on how much is needed per race, per rider. Im a student, so would rather not have to cut my $30 week alcohol budget (joking!!). The theoritcal $10 each rider would also make more work for the host club who are volunteers. This would increase the scope of their roles and call for greater accountability if the funds were not well appropriated. A lot of repsonsibilities for volunteers. Again, conflict of economic models. There is no perceived reward for money given.

Cheers Eddy, good on you for putting it out there and trying to make the difference. MAybe if we all tryed the same as you we would not be in this mess. But, I myself do not want to fund the developement of the sport as a whole. I will however try and look as pro. as possible.

thanks for your input.. if a governing body is in charge of advertising they will charge us a premium for their services much the same.
good on ya for being proffesional about it dude we need more people like you

I've taken this from another thread, I hope Mystic13 doesn't mind, but I think it sums up alot, and the cost to remedy would be virtually nothing, just a little time and forethought by the organisers.

As quoted by Mystic13

mystic is so far of the money ...in the first paragraph, thin king that phone calls will make a difference... sorry guys gals.. thats not how it works.. its who you know.. not what you know.. its a fact..

the other points made though are very valid and a big part of the problem

[Tony.OK]

Yeah mate I was getting at the Info available part of Mystic's quote.

Its gonna be a vicious circle for a while. To get money ya need sponsors, to get sponsors ya need attendance and coverage, to get coverage ya need sponsors to pay...................................

Unfortunately us older pricks won't be around when it all comes to fruition. But we have to do something to get the ball rolling aye.............

[robertydog]

I believe we can make positive changes, they can be small changes that make all the difference, for example.. team shirts, before you say that’s “wanky” I was at the v8s today and I gotta say they know how to run an event.. all pit crews were proud to wear their shirts , it made them stand out. And be recognized.

Good idea i reckon. I posted a pic of Doohan Racing wearing there shirts. They were smart looking team and due to their results they would get visitors to there pit and the visitors knew who to talk to.

And they ran a 150 Superstock not a Superbike

[puddytat]

I reckon if its costing a family more than $20,(4),then its too expensive.
I reckon if you advertise it as free you'd get alot more coming along....more people would make it more likely that you'd get more sponsors possibly interested, but more food stands etc as well, who'd of course would have to pay thier dues.
Id be happy to pay up to $20 bucks extra for promotion of the event,& I do think its a good idea to raise the standards (if you can afford to) of the pits & pit crews...
As far as im aware, MCC (Canterbury) for its club rounds, doesnt charge the public,yet there aint always many folk there....it must be the lack of promotion? Or is it simply that not many people give a fuck about bikes?

[t3mp0r4ry nzr]

This topic has wound be up a bit. I mean, what do we pay our subs to MNZ for?? (rhetorical question) Why are individual riders (like Eddy, Choppa and all that are providing input) put into the position of progressing the sport rather than a collective body? For all racers, is it just an achievement to make it on grid, let alone marketing the sport to the public. Gonna read up on MNZ and what they do, who they represent and what their objectives are, what their resources are. As a member, surely I gain such access. They after all, represent my and everyone (who has a race licence) interests. Their may be hell to pay and Im narrowing my target....

[GIXser]

Yeah mate I was getting at the Info available part of Mystic's quote.

Its gonna be a vicious circle for a while. To get money ya need sponsors, to get sponsors ya need attendance and coverage, to get coverage ya need sponsors to pay...................................

Unfortunately us older pricks won't be around when it all comes to fruition. But we have to do something to get the ball rolling aye.............

right o" yeah im afraid it would be to late for me .. but am happy to spend a bit of time on it, to make it better for younger generations

Good idea i reckon. I posted a pic of Doohan Racing wearing there shirts. They were smart looking team and due to their results they would get visitors to there pit and the visitors knew who to talk to.

And they ran a 150 Superstock not a Superbike

right on the money my friend !!

This topic has wound be up a bit. I mean, what do we pay our subs to MNZ for?? (rhetorical question) Why are individual riders (like Eddy, Choppa and all that are providing input) put into the position of progressing the sport rather than a collective body? For all racers, is it just an achievement to make it on grid, let alone marketing the sport to the public. Gonna read up on MNZ and what they do, who they represent and what their objectives are, what their resources are. As a member, surely I gain such access. They after all, represent my and everyone (who has a race licence) interests. Their may be hell to pay and Im narrowing my target....

i wasnt gonna go there,,, but you make such a valid point!!
it would be good to find out.. if in fact their job is marketing and who ulimately is in charge of it !