What Will Sprint Screw Up Next?
Monday, June 26th, 2006 4:04pm CDT
By Luke, Thunder Lounge
Published on Thunder Lounge.
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[thumb:358:l:s=1:l=x]The reigning question around the water cooler is what will sprint screw up next? So far they’ve bought Nextel, and screwed it up. The service, support, billing, you name it and it’s screwed up. It isn’t anything like it used to be prior to the merger, and I don’t care what they publicly say. The facts, prior to the merger were that 495 of the fortune 500 companies used Nextel. I wonder how many still do. Now it looks like it is possible that they are going to screw up Nascar too, just as we were starting to get used to the change to the yellow and black Cup series sponsorship.
According to the Winston-Salem Journal, Sprint has little interest in sponsoring the premier series in Nascar. Mike Mooney, who has been the head of Nextel’s NASCAR public-relations operation, will be leaving the company quite unexpectedly this week. The other two people that were highly involved in the deal on the Nextel side have already been canned. It appears that Bank Of America is interested in sponsoring the Cup Series, as I’m sure many other prominent companies would be as well. The question is, with an anticipated announcement this weekend of the Series sponsorship fate, will sprint screw this up too? Personally, I’ve been a Nextel customer since well before they sponsored the series. If Sprint screws this deal up, I guess I’ll be looking for another provider.
What would they gain from ditching the sponsorship, or from keeping it? What would they lose?
Simple. The only thing they stand to gain is one less bill. One thing less they spend money on.
From keeping it, and not screwing it up, they stand to gain an ever-increasing audience that takes their purchases and selection of vendors seriously. The demographics continue to show the Nascar consumer is far more likely to pursue a company’s product or service if it’s a sponsor of some relation to Nascar then they are a competitor’s product or service. The power of the Nascar consumer is immense, and something many a company doesn’t overlook.
What they stand to lose is directly related to what they stand to gain by keeping it. In a nutshell, if they piss off the Nascar fan-base, they’re going to lose a lot of business. It might be a trickle effect due to a subscribers contract period, but there’s plenty a fan out there, that if they’re mad enough, would simple pay the ridiculous contract termination fee.
Granted, when it comes to cell service a lot of the carriers are the same. I’ve seen the way that Cingular treats a client with an account bill of close to $80k a year, and it made me swear to keep away from them. Can’t speak for T-Mobile, as I’ve only known a person or two that had them. I do know some people that have Alltel, and they seem pretty content with it.
The sad thing is, that Sprint most likely doesn’t care. After all, they got what they wanted. Nextel, and it’s technology. They could care less about the clients or fans that came with it, or the sponsorship agreements Nextel had made. One of which was a 10 year deal for Nextel to be the title sponsor of the Cup Series.
The best case scenario would be that little changes. May the exception that the “chase” could now be the “Sprint” for the Nextel Cup. However, looking at Sprints track record (most of which we didn’t even get into, since were focusing on Nascar), the future doesn’t look good. Plan for the worst, hope for the best I guess.
Isn’t there some company called Winston, or something close that doesn’t sell cigarettes, that could bring some continuity back to the show? Ahhh screw it. Someone call Anheuser-Busch and tell them that the Budweiser Cup is a go. At least they are a true sponsor of racing, and not some fake entity that’s ready to dump on it.
Need proof?
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Filed Under: Damn Good Points, Features, Nascar, Nextel Cup, The Soapbox, The Water Cooler
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[…] This was my addition to the rumblings this week, as previously discussed in this Thunder Lounge article. I will admit (if you aren’t aware already) that I am not a big fan of Sprint. However, that being said, I have my reasons for it but at the same time I’m not just bashing them for the sake of bashing them. For more on this , read the article here. […]
Sprint, Vickers, Johnson And Ward - Thunder Lounge said this on June 29th, 2006 at 10:27 am