by Tack » Mon Jan 28, 2013 12:15 pm
I dunno that all V8 drivers, or some of the smarter engineers, think that bike racers are stupid. Quite a few of them love to get out on their own bikes at tracks and have a go. Whenever there's a MotoGP on plenty of V8 people want to get home to watch it and when there's a 2 + 4 on with them plenty of V8 people follow and help superbike riders that are their friends.
You may not like V8's, the racing or their people but you have to respect what they've done. In a small sponsorship market (Australia) where high profile sports (Football codes and cricket, etc) all compete for the meagre number of big company sponsorship dollars that exist here, they have excelled. They have achieved the profile, the media coverage and the financial positioning in a tough market against dominant Australian sports.
It’s a huge problem here. We just don’t have the population or large numbers of wealthy companies to support all the sports we have. What determines support here is obviously TV and other media coverage.
What the people behind V8’s have done is taken a floundering but iconic sport and moulded it into a marketing and sponsorship success.
That’s all V8’s is; An Entertainment Franchise. A Reality TV sports show. A business.
Boxed, wrapped and packaged for TV with the sole aim of allowing its franchise members the leverage to attract corporate sponsorship for an extremely expensive sport.
Each team employs companies to track every piece of media coverage they get and the estimated value in return for their sponsor plus the overall value that V8 supercars gains in the overall market place. The cost/ benefit ratio being how much money/value the teams can generate in coverage compared to how much the company can spend through direct advertising in the media or in other sports if they left V8s.
The top V8 drivers are almost TV celebrities, appearing on TV shows, advertising and making appearances at stores etc. They are household names and the category has entrenched itself as a an iconic Australian sport.
This is mentality that bike racing here needs to adopt do to get itself out of the bushes and support lower categories and riders and especially with the added bonus of being able to produce and support more world champions overseas.
The disappointing part is that bike racing can be so much more exciting and competitive than most forms of car racing however that’s not the point is it! Australian bike racing has more World champions than car racing does, plus a long and proud history of very successful riders and engineers on the world stage, probably far more than Australian car racing does. But what difference does all that make. It’s really about money, sponsorship dollars, market share, TV coverage, profile, marketability, value for investment dollar, share holders etc.
That’s what Formula One did under Bernie Ecclestone, It’s what V8 Supercars modelled it on, it’s what NASCAR is all about and it’s what MotoGP has been trying to achieve.
The real question is: What is Stoner doing wanting to drive in a category that embodies and is the pinnacle all the things that he supposedly despises about the direction that MotoGP is heading ?
I live with fear everyday but on weekends she lets me ride.