The Australian View (page 2 of 4)
Peter Goddard, a championship winning team owner stated that a large percentage of the motorcycle racing costs is met by corporate sponsorship. Indeed Bagot (p. 86, 1997) goes so far as to say that without sponsorship motorcycle racing would be significantly less sophisticated, less 'cutting-edge' and possibly less popular.
In return for their significant investment sponsors can achieve similarly significant benefits. A survey conducted by Pope (1992) indicated that competitors and promoters of motor sport in Australia offered the following mechanisms to service potential motorsport sponsors:
- Signage on vehicles, equipment
- Perimeter advertising
- Naming rights to event, race, series or team
- Client entertainment at races
- Client entertainment not at races
- Personal endorsements
- Identification in PR material and communications
- Promotional displays at races
- Provision of equipment
In addition an organization could sponsor motorcycle racing for a myriad of commercially driven reasons. These objectives according to Pope & Voges (p. 43, 1994) could include:
- Increased product awareness
- Improved corporate image
- Product positioning
- Enhance an advertising campaign
- Client entertainment
- Research and development
- Researching a scientific market
- Sales force incentive
- Managerial interest
- Employee motivation
Gilbert (1988 cited in Pope & Voges, p. 39) found that 71% of sponsors used monitoring of non-paid media coverage as the means of monitoring sponsorship success and the achievement of some of those objectives mentioned above. Copeland, Frisby and McCarville (p. 32, 1996) indicated that 61.5% of company's specified that when conducting post event evaluation of their motorsport sponsorship that awareness, exposure and media coverage were the key factors in determining whether or not a sponsorship was successful. If the amount of free publicity is an important tool for measuring success, then being able to estimate this media coverage prior to entering into a sponsorship agreement must be beneficial to a prospective sponsor.
Motorsport in Australia receives a regular amount of television coverage with 40% of the total population watching some form of motorsport (Sweeney, 1995). "Males are very keen followers of motor racing, at least one in two view the four wheel variety on TV, while more than four out of ten watch the two wheel code. Both forms are attracting more interest...." (Sweeney, 1995). .
The motorsport event attracting adequate media coverage with reasonable ratings is not in itself a guarantee that any particular participant in that event is going to receive an adequate amount of telecast time. Motorcycling differs from sports such as Australian Rules Football, Rugby League and even the Australian Supertourers where all competitors/ teams receive a largely guaranteed amount of television exposure throughout the course of a season. Motorcycle racing sees some teams rarely get exposure except for an all too brief moment at the beginning of a race when all competitors are bunched up scrambling from the line. These competitors are quickly left behind usually never to be seen again unless lapped by front runners or involved in a crash.
The teams that attract the major share of unpaid telecast time are more able to meet that particular corporate objective for their sponsor. For those teams that get little or no mass media vision, the value to a potential sponsor is downgraded from national to trackside spectator exposure. Which machines therefore receive the greatest amount of television coverage and by how much?
The mechanism for establishing the success of this type of sponsorship objective is referred to as a media survey or audit. The media survey is based on the television or print exposure of the sponsor's name or logo apart from paid for advertising, measured in television minutes or print centimetres. The cost of the sponsorship can then be directly compared to the monetary value of the exposure had it been paid for (Pope & Voges, p. 39, 1994).
For example, the greater the time a logo or sponsorship message is broadcast, the greater the benefit to the organization of the sponsorship relationship using this means of evaluation. According to Williamson (1996) the number 15 car of Lowndes and Murphy managed 40.23 minutes of air time in the Bathurst 1000, well ahead of the next highest combination of Wayne Gardiner and Neil Crompton in the Coke Commodore with 27.55 minutes. The survey rated the exposure value for this race as $57,160.00/ minute which was the combined advertising rates for all stations which broadcast the Bathurst telecast throughout the country. This exposure gave the sponsors of the Mobil Holden Racing Team an equivalent advertising value of a fraction under 2.3 million dollars for the 10 hour telecast. The 4th placed Coke Commodore came in second with almost $1.6 million with 27.55 minutes of airtime and the 2nd placed number 17 Falcon of Johnson/ Bowe providing just under $1.5 million worth of airtime for its main sponsors, Shell-FAI.
The purpose of this study was to determine how much more, if any, race television exposure a competitive motorcycle/rider combination received over a less competitive combination thus providing greater benefits to the corporate sponsorship with brand or company awareness as an objective.