GG Allin

How does Flying Lizard Motorsports make money? I assume they have millions of dollars invested. But the cars say "Flying Lizard" on them. The only thing they sell on their website is swag. School me.

Veloce Raptor

Sponsors.

GG Allin

Are refering to those little tiny stickers on the cars? What exposure do the sponsors get?

Veloce Raptor

TV. On-site hospitality for sponsors' clients. Print media. Sponsor marketing materials tying in to racing.

And those tiny stickers cost plenty. Look how they market their sponsors:

http://www.lizardms.com/partners/

Also, I would wager that Porsche kicks in a lot of $$$...

MTosi

Flying lizard....

http://www.cpvp.com/inside/sneiman.html

http://www.forbes.com/finance/lists/...atatype=Person

Krohn racing....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracy_Krohn

Patrick E

I love the following saying: how do you make a small fortune racing? Start with a large fortune.

DWalker

Winner winner!

There are other things that a race team brings in to support itself as well. Drivers for example may have thier own personal sponsors which help foot the bill.
A "new" technique some race teams use to bring in income is the "driver test day" where they find relatively talented amatuer drivers and let them "test" for a position with the team for a fee, usually 3-5k. Its a win-win for the team, because they make a decent amount of cash- say, 30k- and might actually find a decent driver candidate for a relatively low output- say 10k for the day, including track rental, gas, tires, crew wages, etc.

Veloce Raptor

Yup. When we had the GAC team, my car was partly supported by an overall team sponsor & partly supported by a sponsor I brought to the table: a client of mine. We never did the test day gig, but others did, for the reasons you specified.

MTosi

Not to rain on anyone's parade thinking they actually making money and have real sponsors, but Seth Neiman is on the board of directors of the two major "sponsors", and is also a major investor/founding member of both (google has shown me over and over again where the money for race teams/drivers comes from).

A more appropriate question would be how are AJR and TRG making money?

Veloce Raptor

Exactly the way I said--primarily with sponsors & pay-to-play drivers.

MTosi

Yup, I was just saying Flying Lizard isn't realy a money making operation like TRG and AJR, they just might be breaking even, but it's mostly Seth funding the team (out of his pocket or his companies) with some help from Porsche. Alex Job and Kevin Buckler are actually trying to return a profit, and do have some legit sponsors (like Ruby Tuesday) so it would be a more interesting case study.

Veloce Raptor

And you know this for a fact?

MTosi

Nope not at all, but deductive reasoning would suggest that. The team was founded in 2003 by Seth Neiman. Clearly he has an interest in racing/driving since he is one of the drivers. Okay so then let's assume he didn't start the team just for entertainment and he wanted to run a new business/return a profit. Most of the drivers that are racing (or have) with the team are pro's and not paying for their ride (Bergmeister, Henzler, Law, Pilet, Overbeek). So then we go to the sponsor/parter page on there website to find the money, since they are barely visible on the racecars (up to this point I wasn't even aware who their "major" sponsors were). So we find only 4 sponsors. First is Michelin who is clearly not funding the team, simply providing tires. Then we go to Troy Lee Designs a smaller motorcycle fashion company, I doubt they are funding very much of the team. So that leaves us with the two major sponsors, Shoretel and ESilicion, a quick search on google returns the fact Seth Neiman (a super rich venture capitalist) is on the board of directors of both and also is a large share holder/founding member of each. Now that would lead me to believe either he is funding the team completely and he figures he might as well get some sponsorship opportunities out it, or he can pull strings at the company (or is just plain incharge) and is having them fund his hobby. Now could the organization as a whole be breaking even, possibly, but the real question is the team owner returning a profit, I HIGHLY doubt Seth Neiman is making money on the operation, although that is 100% speculation.

Potomac-Greg

Auberlein and Hand can't do a 10 second interview without turning it into a commercial for Ruby Tuesday. They're definitely getting their money's worth. Kind of NASCAR-ish, but if it works, more power to them. Somehow, I can't see some of the European/Latin American drivers becoming shameless pitchmen.

Streak

I think the OP's confusion lies in the difference between the Flying Lizard sponsorship and traditional advertising/sponsorship relationship like Ruby Tuesday.

Ruby Tuesday gets exposure in a big way and has a product to sell the masses based on that exposure (hopefully. I actually do go because they sponsor a team and it's close to home ). They are paying for what we comprehend to be a traditional advertising medium. The whole car or most of it screams Ruby Tuesday, buy a hamburger!

What does Flying Lizard sell? The other sponsors on the car are minuscule in comparative exposure to Flying Lizard. Is Flying Lizard selling garage type services, team management services? What do they sell and why doesn't the car have a huge ShoreTel livery in the same manner as other teams with their sponsors?

One is immediately recognizable as advertising, the other is a little murkier.