Geico to end NASCAR premier partnership deal after 2024 season

Geico to end NASCAR premier partnership deal after 2024 season

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Geico will end its premier partnership with NASCAR after this season, marking the first time the racing circuit will lose one of the top-tier sponsors from the system it started in 2020. The Berkshire Hathaway-controlled insurer has been involved in the sport since at least 2009, and it became the official insurance of NASCAR in 2019 before stepping up to the premier partner level in 2020. That year, NASCAR began using an IOC- or NCAA-like sponsor model for its Cup Series instead of the single title sponsor model it had employed since 1971.

The current spend of Geico is unclear but the company was paying NASCAR low seven figures annually for the official insurance category rights in 2019, so it’s costs are likely at least at that level now. The company also formerly had a full-season team deal with now-defunct Germain Racing that ended after 2020 and it dropped a title sponsorship of a Monster Energy Supercross team that year. Since then, the company has gone through several major changes in its marketing department, including bringing on Damon Burrell as CMO and making changes with the external agencies it uses.

NASCAR confirmed Geico’s decision to end the premier partnership after this season, telling SBJ in a statement: “The partnership between NASCAR and GEICO has demonstrated the immense value and weekly excitement that two consumer-driven brands can create, and we are proud of the extraordinary brand value, exposure and growth opportunities we’ve built together.”

It was unclear whether Geico could stay in NASCAR and motorsports in other ways, such as through TV advertising. Geico has been one of the top spenders on Fox and NBC during NASCAR races over the last decade. One of the most notable fan-facing parts of the company’s deal has been the Geico restart zones on racetracks, the areas where the lead driver during the start or restart can begin to accelerate fully as the race gets back underway. Geico also title sponsored one of Talladega’s annual Cup Series races and has sponsored campgrounds at tracks like Daytona.

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The other original premier partners are Anheuser-Busch’s Busch Beer, Coca-Cola and Comcast’s Xfinity brand, the last of which is in renewal talks both for the premier partnership and its separate title sponsorship of NASCAR’s secondary series, a deal that started in 2015. Comcast VP/Branded Partnerships & Activation Matt Lederer has said Xfinity is evaluating a new deal with NASCAR from the perspective of “not trying to look at what Year 11 looks like but really, how does this become Year 1 of a new deal?” Sources have said Xfinity could renew the Xfinity Series entitlement for a shorter period, perhaps as brief as a year, while renewing the premier partner asset for longer.

NASCAR has already been in the market looking for another new premier partner; the series has been open to having five sponsors at the top level, but now a new one would slot in to replace Geico. This comes as NASCAR is also working with CAA on finding a new chief commercial officer, whose responsibilities will include premier partnerships. When it was first in the market looking for premier partners in 2019, NASCAR was seeking $15-20M annually per partner, though it was unclear how much incremental revenue NASCAR saw from the first four premier partners because all of them were already official partners of the sanctioning body on a lower level. NASCAR has several dozen official sponsors overall on different tiers.


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