Food Lion to stay on as Speed Street sponsor
Friday, May. 07, 2010
Food Lion will keep its name on uptown's Speed Street festival through 2012, extending a relationship that dates to 1996.
The renewal comes amid a recession that has shrunk sponsorship dollars across the racing industry, prompting cost-cutting and consolidation. Mooresville-based Lowe's, for instance, let its naming rights deal for Charlotte Motor Speedway lapse at the end of 2009, after 11 years.
"It puts us in rare territory for events like this around the country," said Jay Howard, president of the JHE Production Group, a Harrisburg company that has produced Speed Street since 1996. "It's been very challenging for a lot of free festivals to maintain their major sponsors."
Speed Street is almost entirely dependent on sponsorship revenues, Howard said. Its other major sponsors - Chevrolet, Coca-Cola and Miller beer - are also intact and have been with the event 15 years or more, he said. Food Lion signed on in 1996 and moved up to title sponsor in 1997. Its previous agreement expired last year.
Held in conjunction with Memorial Day weekend NASCAR races, this year's Food Lion Speed Street runs May 27-29.
Despite the economic upheaval, Food Lion continues to find the festival and NASCAR a good investment, said David Godfredson, the Salisbury-based grocery chain's director of advertising and marketing.
Food Lion and Howard declined to discuss the terms of the deal, though Howard said it "did not change much at all."
"We have multiple marketing platforms that celebrate the activities our customers are interested in, and racing is certainly one of those very important ones," Godfredson said. "When you look at the locations of the tracks and the density of the fan base, that's Food Lion's footprint."
Forty percent of the retailer's customer base attends or watches at least one race per month, Godfredson said, and the racing industry is an important regional employer. Food Lion is also a sponsor of Charlotte Motor Speedway and has a longstanding, small sponsorship with Huntersville-based Joe Gibbs Racing.
"We're not looking at NASCAR as a dying sport," he said. "Quite frankly, it's as healthy as the rest of the economy in the recession."
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