On This Day: NASCAR Entered Into One of it’s Most Successful Partnerships

NASCAR has been around since 1949 and is entering its 75th season. Since its inaugural edition, it has cycled through multiple title sponsors. However, the longest-standing name was Winston Cigarettes, which inked a deal all the way back in 1970. Since then, they enjoyed a 33-year partnership, which propelled stock car racing to more fame.

Prior to this, the series was called the Grand National Division. So on December 10th, Bill France Sr. was thrilled to announce that from 1971 onwards, they would rename it as the Winston Cup Series. The cigarette maker brand revealed that it would establish a $100,000 Winston Cup award. They would distribute the money based on a point system for the upcoming campaign.

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With this, France Sr. hoped to make the point fund the largest in motorsport. That year, the fund came to around $200,000, of which half would go to the driver’s champion. It is also worth mentioning that Winston Cigarettes was owned by RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company.

How has the NASCAR Cup Series evolved since then?

The Winston Cup Series name stayed on for an astonishing duration of 33 years. The deal, which was penned in 1970, lasted until 2003 when it expired. From 2004 until 2007, it was known as the NEXTEL Cup Series, following a fresh deal with Nextel Communications. In 2005, the Sprint Corporation acquired Nextel Communications, and they renamed it the Sprint Cup Series in 2008. The NASCAR Sprint Cup Series tenure lasted a little longer than its predecessor but soon left after 2016.

In the following year, Monster Energy became the new title sponsor, but their deal was only until 2019. However, from 2020 onwards, the strategy changed drastically. NASCAR announced a move to a tiered sponsorship model that mirrored other US-based professional sports leagues. Hence, it has since been termed the NASCAR Cup Series. Of course, the series still has primary sponsors, called premier partners. These premier partners are Busch Beer, Coca-Cola, GEICO, and Xfinity.

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What is your take on the current sponsorship model for the NASCAR title? Let us know in the comments section.