Menu
Marketing and Sponsorship

Pocono Raceway hires Front Row Marketing to sell sponsorships, manage analytics

Editor’s note: This story is revised from the print edition.

Pocono Raceway has hired Comcast-Spectacor’s Front Row Marketing to sell race title sponsorships, sign sponsors and manage sales analytics for the facility’s NASCAR and IndyCar races.

The move is expected to bring an end to Pocono’s practice of forgoing title sponsorships for its marquee NASCAR races. It also gives Front Row its first motorsports facility client.

After selling naming rights to NASCAR races for years to Coca-Cola, Sam Goody’s and others, Pocono’s owner, the late Dr. Joe Mattioli, decided to stop selling them in the mid-1990s. It wasn’t until Sunoco and the Red Cross approached the raceway in 2008 and offered it a cause-related deal — the Sunoco Red Cross Pennsylvania 500 — that the facility began selling them again. It’s had a half-dozen title sponsorships over the last four or five years, according to Pocono Raceway President Brandon Igdalsky.

“My grandfather got rid of entitlements because he got tired of looking at the schedule and seeing four races with the same name,” Igdalsky said. “It lost the identity of what Pocono was. But entitlements are part of the game now, and it’s important to brands and the sponsors around us to have that visibility.”

Front Row President Chris Lencheski said his company will concentrate on finding race sponsors and facility sponsors who are new to motorsports.

“Brandon and his team know the sponsors in the garage,” Lencheski said. “They don’t need our help with that. We’re talking to people that aren’t involved in the sport — a lot of folks who may know the NASCAR story, but they don’t necessarily know the Pocono story.”

Pocono will continue to work with FullCircle Ventures, which it hired earlier this year to represent it for corporate sponsorship sales.

Front Row, which will be its primary agency of record, will be on a retainer.

SBJ Morning Buzzcast: March 25, 2024

NFL meeting preview; MLB's opening week ad effort and remembering Peter Angelos.

Big Get Jay Wright, March Madness is upon us and ESPN locks up CFP

On this week’s pod, our Big Get is CBS Sports college basketball analyst Jay Wright. The NCAA Championship-winning coach shares his insight with SBJ’s Austin Karp on key hoops issues and why being well dressed is an important part of his success. Also on the show, Poynter Institute senior writer Tom Jones shares who he has up and who is down in sports media. Later, SBJ’s Ben Portnoy talks the latest on ESPN’s CFP extension and who CBS, TNT Sports and ESPN need to make deep runs in the men’s and women's NCAA basketball tournaments.

SBJ I Factor: Nana-Yaw Asamoah

SBJ I Factor features an interview with AMB Sports and Entertainment Chief Commercial Office Nana-Yaw Asamoah. Asamoah, who moved over to AMBSE last year after 14 years at the NFL, talks with SBJ’s Ben Fischer about how his role model parents and older sisters pushed him to shrive, how the power of lifelong learning fuels successful people, and why AMBSE was an opportunity he could not pass up. Asamoah is 2021 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree. SBJ I Factor is a monthly podcast offering interviews with sports executives who have been recipients of one of the magazine’s awards.

Shareable URL copied to clipboard!

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2012/11/12/Marketing-and-Sponsorship/Pocono.aspx

Sorry, something went wrong with the copy but here is the link for you.

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2012/11/12/Marketing-and-Sponsorship/Pocono.aspx

CLOSE