The end of an era that never really got started (cont'd)

Mike Burch, vice president for development at Speedway Motorsports Inc., the parent company of Lowe's Motor Speedway, believes the relative youth of stadiums and arenas in other sports also plays a role.

"I think if you look at it, a lot of this as been driven by new facilities," he said. "Almost all the facilities that have naming-rights partnerships are facilities that are being newly-built. You look across the motorsports landscape, and it tends to be a matter of improving existing facilities rather than flat-out building new race tracks. That's one thing that jumps out at me that drives naming-rights opportunities."

There's also plenty of competition within the sport. Companies that want to get involved in NASCAR have a myriad of options, ranging from agreements with the sanctioning body, to personal deals with drivers, to a range of sponsorship alternatives with race cars. To a certain degree, it's more cost-effective to pay for 38 hits a year on a race car than one or two with a race track. When Lowe's struck its deal with the Charlotte track, the company backed a car driven by Mike Skinner, who never won a race on NASCAR's premier level. Is it a coincidence that Lowe's is stepping away at a time when it backs a car driven by three-time series champion Jimmie Johnson?

"You have far more unique ways to activate around NASCAR if you're a marketing partner than you do if you're a marketing partner of a sports team," Carter said. "You can get involved with the league, in terms of NASCAR, you can get involved with the individual teams, and obviously sponsorship is vital to the drivers themselves. So if I'm a sponsor, I might be able to activate more creatively with NASCAR as a backdrop given the different prongs that it offers, than aligning my corporate name to a facility. It's the very strength of NASCAR and its drivers that make facilities relatively less attractive."

Humpy Wheeler, the former president and general manager of Lowe's Motor Speedway and SMI, points to another reason -- geography. Tracks, he argues, typically draw from a much larger swath of the country, as opposed to stadiums and arenas that usually attract fans from the same city. And a naming-rights deal can make it difficult for people hundreds of miles away to know what facility you're talking about.

"Take California, for instance. Auto Club [Speedway], now who knows where that is? Most people in the industry say, 'I'm going to California.' Most people in the state say, 'I'm going to Fontana.' Because that's where everybody knows it is," said Wheeler, who now runs the consulting firm The Wheeler Co.

"There are a lot of problems with naming rights. No. 1, your souvenir sales are not going to be what they'd be with the geographic name, because people would rather buy a Charlotte Motor Speedway T-shirt than a Lowe's Motor Speedway T-shirt. It's not that they don't like Lowe's, it's the geographic name and location. They want to say they've been there. Then, speedway races are sold over much bigger geographic areas than say, football games. Fifty percent of the tickets to the [Cola-Cola] 600 are sold from more than 200 miles away, a lot of them to people in Canada, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. So the farther you get from the place, the more confusing the name becomes. If you're trying to convert new fans in Pennsylvania and say 'Lowe's' rather than 'Charlotte,' well, people in Pennsylvania don't know where Lowe's is. So there are some negatives to naming rights."

According to Burch, SMI doesn't necessarily shop its facilities to potential naming-rights suitors, which often happens in other sports. Instead, the idea may come up as the speedway company and a potential sponsor negotiate a package that best suits the company involved.

"At some level, when somebody starts talking about, we're looking to build awareness and we're looking to reach people, at some point you think, well, is there an opportunity for this to be a naming-rights situation? So it's always a tool you have in your bag, like a race entitlement or a trackside sign," Burch said.

"In today's world, first and foremost, it has to be, does this meet the needs of the company involved? You can't go in there with a predetermined agenda of, 'This is what I want to sell to somebody,' or, 'I have to sell them on it.' You can do that, but you're not very likely to be talking about a renewal at the end of that period."

Wheeler, who ran the Charlotte track for more than 30 years, said the Lowe's deal was brokered by an agency out of New Jersey. Looking back on it now, it seems clear that the veteran promoter had some reservations.

"I didn't then and still don't now look upon it as groundbreaking," he said. "Yeah, it was the first track to have the name sold. But was it the right thing to do, and did it do what it wanted to do? Yeah, Lowe's is a great company. But would we have been better off making another deal with Lowe's, like having them sponsor a race? I don't know if we'd be able to answer that question. You can say Lowe's got a great deal out of that, but how much did the speedway lose in identity? Did people in Ontario know where Lowe's is?"

One thing is certain -- Wheeler wouldn't do such a thing today.

"If I were managing a speedway today, I would not sell the naming rights to the speedway," he said. "I would sell the naming rights to the media center, but I would not sell the naming rights to the speedway. One thing, it means too much to the community. And I think it hurts you too much in marketing and advertising, particularly today when you're struggling to sell tickets in this economy."

As for the Lowe's deal, Burch believes it ultimately benefited both parties. "I think absolutely," he said. "You look at the growth of both sides, what Lowe's did during that period of time, their growth into a national company. You look at the growth of Speedway Motorsports and the things we were able to do here at Lowe's Motor Speedway to improve the fan experience. I think both sides have benefited from it, and I think both sides will continue to."