Right on, man! Don’t cave to the corporate bastards! Unless, well see here’s the thing. You can, and you will, if you want to get together the cabbage needed to get the enterprise you are involved with rolling. It always has, and always WILL be, all about the Benjamins. And so, as promised, we will venture down that yellow brick road of sponsors, marketing-partners, and MERCHANDISING, because as Mighty Yogurt told us, that is how the picture makes money.

Take me for example. First set foot on a racetrack in 1971. Fast forward eighteen years, I’m working there, and selling videos and anything else I could whore up at the moment, because those bills aren’t going to be paid by my boyish good looks. (stop laughing, o.k.?) Then ZOOM, and I’m on TV for fourteen years, followed by eleven years or so with Jeff Burks book, and yet never did I have my own, me-designated merchandise. Until NOW! We are still sorting out the sales format on this, but for now message me on Facebook to secure you own NITRO JOINT sew-on patch. Racers have always, ALWAYS been looking for a way to cover the bills. Back in the proverbial “day”, trashed parts went straight to the venerable fifty-five gallon drum, aka the trash can. (that is how I have a piston from quite possibly Jungle Jim Libermans last race, and I am MISTER Trash-Diver, thank you very much) In todays environment it is par for the course for broken parts to be shined up and autographed by the driver, and they are in the merch trailers doing a very brisk business, thank you very much.

Now, we could break down the world of motorsports sponsors, marketing partners and merchandising piece by piece, but that could take years, and cost millions of lives. Rather, I’m going to hit on many the first hand, life experiences and such I’ve seen unfold. It goes without saying I’d lead off with the breakthrough deal that Don ‘The Snake’ Prudhomme and Tom ‘The Mongoose’ McEwen struck with Mattel toys. McEwens Mother had an ‘in’ at Mattel, favors were cashed in, and meeting were set. Before you could say “Two drag-dogs and a Coke with too much ice”, the Mongoose/Snake Drag Sets were one of the hottest selling toys of the year. They hit the match race trail like it was a punching bag, all the while doing personnel appearances at malls and the like. (these were plugged at the end of TV commercials for the toys or radio-spots from the dragstrips) Tons of kids would show up, Prudhomme and McEwen would be there, signing autographs posing for pictures with local celebrities and playing with the kids. And the toys flew off the shelves like they had wings! It is not unusual to see one of those sets on eBay today for $500.00. (glad I still have both of mine!) You would expect the racing house-organs to say this was the deal that changed EVERYTHING for racing sponsorships, but while working on this, I’ve found articles in the New York Times, Business Week and more saying the exact same thing. Suddenly getting a deal from an oil company or a car dealership seemed like peanuts. (the food, not the comic-strip) The rival to Hot Wheels and Mattel was an outfit called Johnny Lightning, and they promptly took notice, and gave a deal to Al Unser and his USAC car, which turns around and wins the Indy 500. Corporate America had found a whole new kind of billboard, and not one that stood alongside the highway. These billboards were speeding up and down, or around and around at racetracks the Nation over. Over here, you had Billy Meyers Texas-based (more on this dude later) funny car bannering pool slides (Aqua Slide and Dive). The hard working and brilliant Roland Leong and his string of Hawaiian funny cars got in on the action, tired of spending his own money, he got into the mix with Avanti CB antennas, Kings Hawaiian Bread, and Hawaiian Punch kids drinks. From Colorado hailed the Frazier and Abbott Top Fuel dragster, sponsored by a deal called Jet X . ( believe it was a car-washing kit. google went all brain-dead on me and only wants to talk about some dope in a comic book, TRUST ME, that is not the right answer) And I HAVE to show some love to our Pro Stock buddies, Dyno Don Nicholson had MINOLTA cameras on the side of his Ford Pinto. From Washington was Ed ‘The Ace’ McCulloch. Fresh off his stint with Revell models, he had a then unheard of concept, a ‘home warranty company”. You had to flip over his hero card to figure it out, asking it out loud was a blank-check to sound stupid. (and to this day, I see the commercials for AMERICAN HOME SHIELD on the tube in the work breakroom every Wednesday morning, guess they’ve done o.k. for themselves)

I mentioned Billy Meyer. I was in high school when I first heard of this cat, winning the prestigious OCIR Funny Car Championship.(sidebar: this was a borderline National Event at the time, race fans) Aside from all the sponsor stuff he did, he saw the big picture. So, check it out, your a motivated Texan (again with that State) trying to seal a deal, but what is going on here? Dragstrips in the 1970s were, well, WE loved them, but compared to NASCARS stuff, we were a bunch of hillbillies. Billy, he’s trying to woo big-bucks, but “Chauncy-Upper-Crust” is pissed because he has to park his BMW next to some van, owned by some dope named Chicago Jon. This rock-monster is blasting his Ted Nugent 8-tracks thru a Pioneer sound system, as he burns hot-dogs on a hibachi. (because he’s too busy playing Frisbee) So, realizing that big-bucks was not impressed with drag-dogs, wet T-shirt contests, and “Alpine-Valley-esque” port-o-lets, he/Billy does something about it. And what he does is build, in 1986, a dragstrip that must have seemed like some out of the JETSONS at the time. There are tower-suites? Catered in food? Actual plumbed washrooms?? Great Googly-Moogly, what the hey is going ON here, right?? The Texas Motorplex becomes the blueprint for every racetrack built ever since, man those wacky Texans… Texans…..

 But saving the biggest for last, in terms of merchandise and mega-bucks, we must talk about the Blue Max funny car from Texas, where everything is, duh, once again, bigger. The original team of Harry Schmidt and Richard Tharp were terrors on the track, but other than the proverbial oils or performance parts, it ran out of its own pockets, until the only thing left in the pockets were lint. New blood in the form of Raymond Beadle comes along in 1975, and Beadle starts making deals (some say he was getting four times the money from promoters that Harry would) Oh, and they started winning a lot of races. I mean, a LOT. But, here is the master-stroke, what the Snake and the Mongoose put in kids hands, the Blue Max put on the torsos of race fans everywhere. This was the first team to go all gonzo with T-shirts, hats, and (God Bless the ’70s) HALTER TOPS, for the sassy lasses out there. My memory, and a tad of research shows that the Blue Max team pulled in $100,000 dollars in shirt sales in their first full-blown year. (that number, calculated to today, is about $584,000.00 ) Here is where that gets even better. You can get writers-cramp listing all the high-end companies the Blue Max had as sponsors, and those names all went on the clothes as well (Hello, DUH!) Regal Ride shocks, English Leather cologne (actually they sponsored everyone from Craig Breedloves rocket, to Jeb Allens dragster, Shirley Muldowneys car down the road, and the good old Mongooses funny car) Schlitz beer, Motorcraft, Old Milwaukee Light, Kodiak, it goes on. Beadle, along with that ‘bigger in Texas’ swagger, built a NASCAR team, how did it do? 1989 season Champions, not too shabby. My favorite Blue Max T-shirt went missing after a party in 1978, but I still have an autographed ‘painter hat’ from 1982. You’re going, “a what”? More merchandising brilliance. These little paper hats, splattered with all those sponsors probably cost them pennies on the pound. But when you’d go up the return road, the crew is chucking them by the fist-full into crowd. Want to make friends? GIVE STUFF AWAY!  The late great Don Schumacher took over a deal, WONDER BREAD from Continental Bakeries. Paint the cars up in those polka-dot schemes from the wrappers, call them WONDERWAGONS and here we go! Continental even made up mini bread-loafs to give to fans!

SO, you want to have your garage-band move on? Get some money, hire an agency. Your Super Stock car kicks tail, and you want to move up to Pro Stock? Start lighting up those phones, and have a marketing team on board, to put together a package and a presentation. Guess what, because the ever-present “corporate-schmuck” will have NO TIME for a couple of bozos in jeans and greasy T-shirts, going, “Uh, we rule at Dingle-dork drag-city! Let us IN, you CLOWN!!” You need to show them your sport is something that will bring those previously mentioned ‘Benjamins’ first to you, but ultimately to THEM. In the classic Drag Racing movie AMERICAN NITRO, the first words out of Tom McEwens mouth sum it all up, The Mongoose says…”Money…Money…MONEY!” Mike Ditka once said ‘If you can’t find a way, MAKE a way’. Believe in yourself, and believe in your dream, and make it happen.

Til next time, I AM Chicago Jon, time to say…CCCC-YYYAAAAA!!!