24 June 2007

Hey NASCAR, don't be hating!



1st off, I am an employee of AT&T, and a fan of NASCAR. 2nd, I am pissed off at the France family (this is the family that owns NASCAR. They have started a battle with AT&T over the company's sponsorship of Jeff Burton's #31. Before the merger Burton's main sponsor was Cingular. Now that the merger has completed, they want to put the AT&T logo on the car. Sprint and NASCAR are raising hell trying to keep it from happening. (read article for more info on background) They claim that allowing RCR to rebrand the car would interfere with Sprint's exclusive rights deal as official telecom company of NASCAR. Bullshit! Budweiser is the "official beer of NASCAR", yet there is a Miller car and a Coors car. Home Depot is the "official home improvement store of NASCAR", yet Lowes and Menard both sponsor cars. Hell, the Busch race on Saturday night was sponsored by AT&T. The France family had no problem cashing that check! I remember when it was the Winston Cup and there was a Skoal car, a Kodiak car and a Levi-Garrett car. Why were there no conflicts then? It's funny thatSprint feels threatened by AT&T having a Death Star logo on Jeff Burton's car. Sorry you're not the best telecom company out there, but you can't close the gap by denying AT&T advertising rights to the hood of a car. Try developing better technologies, besides a walkie talkie feature. (You didn't even develop that yourself, you bought Nextel to get it.) The France family deserves the most blame for allowing this mess to grow into $100 million lawsuits. Hypocrisy plagues NASCAR.

No comments: