Advice About Car Racing Sponsors

"TINA STULL: Hi. I'm Tina Stull, and I drive the Top Dragster for Interstate Batteries. On behalf of Expert Village, today we're going to talk about the basics of racing. A lot of people come to me and say, "How do you get a sponsor?" One of the things I would say is a sponsor--having a sponsor is great but you also have responsibilities when you have your sponsor; that you need to maintain that relationship and that also ends up by being an additional cost so when--if somebody says, "Hey, I'm going to give you $1000." you need to consider somewhere around 20% of that money is going to be used to maintain that sponsorship. If they show up at the track, you're going to need to take care of them, feed them, and so forth. If they send over VIPs, there are expenses involved in that, and a lot of times some sponsors will pay for certain things but you also have to show your appreciation back and that definitely is going to pull out of your own budget. So, when you take all these into consideration, then you know how much it's going to cost you pretty much per race. From that, then you'll--you'll look and say, "Well, how many races am I going to do?" and you'll end up with a full budget if you--if it ends up by being $2000 a race and you want to race 10 races, you need to make sure that you have guaranteed $20,000 so that you can cover your racing season."