What is a Sprint Car?

A sprint car is a 1,300 pound race car that produces in excess of 850 horsepower. Sprint cars race on dirt race tracks throughout the United States, with a particularly strong following in the Midwest. Events often have total paid attendance in excess of 2,000 people.

What is the Midwest Open Wheel Association?

MOWA was started in February 2011 as a not for profit association of drivers, car owners and fans of sprint car racing in the Midwest. Our geographic base is Springfield, Illinois with 12-15 drivers residing in or around Springfield. We have scheduled approximately 13 races throughout Illinois and Iowa for the 2011 season.

Are People Interested?

Notice that the above video has received in excess of 1,000 views on YouTube.com within the first 40 hours of it being published. It is representative of the quality, professionalism, and attitude with which we will be marketing the series. Our Facebook page has gained 20-30 followers per day since it’s launch and our website traffic is increasing at a remarkable rate. In addition, there are several internet forums related to our form of racing and posts relating to our series have routinely exceeded 500 page views per post.

With racing season still a month away and our series still in its infancy, we expect those numbers to increase dramatically. Weekly video clips, traffic to our website, Facebook and social media, internet forum posts and related online initiatives should easily account for over 5,000 online impressions for our series and marketing partners per day during the racing season.

Where Is Our Market?

MOWA will focus on racing at tracks within 100 miles of Springfield, Illinois. These tracks are located in and around Jacksonville, Lincoln, Decatur, Vandalia, Canton, LaSalle and the St. Louis Metro East area in Illinois, along with Burlington, Iowa. We will be focusing our marketing efforts within a narrow regional geographic area where we can have the greatest impact for regional advertisers and be in a position to assist with regional marketing initiatives.

Have Your Competitors Found Sprint Car Racing?

Yes they have. Sprint cars offer the same excitement, energy and attitude as other X game styled new generation sports. High speeds, action, and drama, along with a few thrills and spills throughout the night are standard fare for a sprint car event. With much of the extreme sports scene centered on the west coast, sprint car racing allows exposure to a large existing fan base in the Midwest with the same attitude and appeal the extreme sports offer in other parts of the country.

Here are examples of energy drinks that have brought sprint car racing into their marketing mix with financial commitments deep into six figures or more of support:

Red Bull Sprint Car from Sean Cain on Vimeo.

Shane Stewart – Rockstar Lucas Oil Sprint Car Driver from Chris McEniry on Vimeo.

Our Drivers

We have secured commitments from over 25 drivers to participate in our full series. There are also numerous other drivers from throughout the Midwest that will participate in select races. Some of the part time drivers are familiar national names for fans of sprint car racing. Our drivers have a significant following within our target market with several participants having family histories in racing dating back several generations. Our typical driver is aged 18-35 and fully understands the importance of providing maximum exposure for our sponsors and partners. In addition to our younger drivers, we will have several older veteran drivers including Springfield’s Jim Moughan and Indy 500 veteran Donnie Beechler setting up ongoing battles for generational superiority.

Our Marketing Plan

We hope to associate with partners that have an existing strong marketing presence in our target area. We will be asking each to bring a share of exposure and promotion to our series through their existing promotional methods. With several brands exposing the series and building interest, each partner will individually benefit through exposure that might have originated through another. For example, it might not be Monster that paid for inclusion in a particular newspaper ad, but Monster will benefit from having its brand be a featured part of the ad copy.

This effect is even more pronounced with our regional television package. We will be producing a weekly television show titled “Midwest Open Wheel Report” that will air throughout the Springfield/Champaign DMA consisting of roughly 385,000 households two times per week at 11:30a.m Sunday on WRSP Fox 55/27 and again on Sunday at 6:00pm on Central Illinois CW, WBUI. The show will be ad supported, and due to low production costs, we can offer advertisers 30 second spots for 1/10th the cost of a local spot on NASCAR races that broadcast a half hour later than our show.

The television exposure is groundbreaking for a series such as ours. It will create tremendous buzz not only in our target market, but across the national open wheel racing community due to the fact that it hasn’t been attempted before – and certainly not with a professional HD production. We would expect that the television show when placed online for on-demand viewing following our broadcasts will receive thousands of views per week from across the country. It is also likely that our television efforts will be the focus of feature stories in publications that aimed at race fans over time.

For our partner brands, the TV show offers the equivalent of a half hour of long form advertising. Most of our segments will be filmed in and around tracks that will feature signage of our participating brands in the background. In addition, segments will be ‘brought to you’ by certain brands and those logos or messages will be featured even when a viewer might skip through the traditional commercial spots in a broadcast.

Our Events

A typical event will last approximately 5 hours and will be fully produced from beginning to end. Our own series announcer will serve as a master of ceremonies to familiarize fans with our drivers and sponsors throughout the night. Fan interaction will be a cornerstone of our production through autograph sessions, driver interviews, fan contests and give-aways.

Through extensive signage and branding, we hope to create a visual field that is full of brand exposure for our marketing partners. This will apply not only for the fans in attendance at our races, but also when video footage is played either online or on our weekly television show, creating a backdrop for everything we do. The visual approach we are taking is quite familiar to Monster through it’s involvement in AMA Supercross and similar motorsports events:

We will also have our own set of female models (tastefully and appropriately attired for a family event) who will serve in a supporting role similar to the way cheerleaders and ball girls do at major league sporting events. They will become an integral part of our show and fans should in time become familiar with them.

Monster’s Involvement With MOWA

Monster Energy is a lifestyle brand – a lifestyle that fits perfectly into our target demographic. The notoriety and intangible benefits the Monster brand brings to a sponsorship arrangement are real and proven. To MOWA, Monster would serve as a ‘magnet’ sponsor – one that attracts other major businesses that in turn can provide additional media exposure with Monster being the leading beneficiary.

We want to wrap our series in the Monster brand and benefit through what has become the Monster marketing machine. Our series gives Monster a product in the Midwest that is consistent with its image and targeted demographic. MOWA is the content that provides a vehicle for Monster exposure.

We believe that by providing an intense and extreme motorsports production that has a significant and loyal following in the Midwest, that we fill a void in Monster’s existing motorsports marketing plan. We are looking for an ongoing partnership that can grow and adapt to new opportunities and bring greater exposure to not only our series and drivers, but to the Monster brand as well.