Despite losses, Sprint has no plans to leave NASCAR

CONCORD, N.C. -- A fake movie marquee, complete with bright lights, stood over the entrance. Inside, lighted designs in purple and yellow swirled over the walls and ceiling. On the movie screen, clips were shown of new television commercials directed by Michael Mann of Collateral and Miami Vice fame.

If Sprint is suffering from losses announced last week, it wasn't showing Tuesday, when the title sponsor of NASCAR's Cup series held a mimic movie premiere to announce the rebranding of what for the past four seasons has been known as the Nextel Cup tour. There's a new name for the all-star exhibition (the Sprint All-Star Race), a Daytona 500 pre-race show featuring musical acts from Brooks and Dunn to Chubby Checker, new features for wireless telephone customers and new commercials featuring snarling racecars.

• Daytona Countdown
• Acceleration
• Preseason Thunder
• Get your tickets
• Book your travel

The message was clear: Sprint is here, and it isn't going anywhere. Despite a report released Friday that detailed deeper than expected subscriber losses, a 25 percent drop in stock and a plan to cut 4,000 jobs, the wireless provider said it has no plans to ask out of the 10-year entitlement deal it signed with NASCAR prior to the 2004 season.

"Certainly there are some challenges with the business, and Dan Hesse, who has been our CEO for about four weeks, is working on those things, and making the decisions that need to be made," Dean Kessel, Sprint's director of NASCAR marketing, said Tuesday during the Lowe's Motor Speedway preseason media tour. "As it relates to what we're doing inside the Sprint Cup Series, we're singularly focused on Daytona and executing the things we talked about doing [Tuesday]. Our team is ready to go, and we have the resources to do what we need to do, and we're going to do it."

Sprint has six years remaining on its deal with NASCAR, worth a reported $750 million. The third-largest mobile telephone company in the United States, Sprint's rate of "churn" -- subscribers leaving the company -- was 630,000 in the fourth quarter of last year, markedly higher than the expected 500,000.

But those numbers, Kessel said, will not affect the NASCAR program. The series lost longtime title sponsor R.J. Reynolds after the 2003 season partly because of declining revenues within the tobacco industry.

"This program works," Kessel said "It works for us from a business standpoint, it works for us across a number of key platforms. ... Our customers, our database, who have said, 'Hey, I'm a NASCAR fan and I'm using your product because you support my lifestyle,' they churn less. They use more data. Our acquisition numbers are higher. The business case is still extremely solid for us remaining in this sport, and that's why we're not going anywhere."