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The licensing agreement between NASCAR and the city of Charlotte denies a corporate sponsor the ability to fund the new $107.5 million NASCAR Hall of Fame. Charlotte - which will build and pay for the hall going up in the city’s downtown by 2009 - will pay NASCAR for the rights to put its name on the door, hoping NASCAR’s historically loyal fans will boost city tourism, writes The Charlotte Observer.
“We didn’t want to have a particular corporate name on it, because we wanted the purity of the NASCAR name,” said Tim Newman, head of the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority, the future owner and operator of the Hall of Fame.
NASCAR has agreed to only take royalties for the use of its name if it would not cause the hall to loose money. Officials estimate that the first-year royalties and other payments will amount to $1.8 million.
Atlanta, Daytona Beach, Kansas City, and Richmond, Va., couldn’t compete with Charlotte’s bid for the hall - which was complete with billboards bragging: “Racing was built here. Racing belongs here.” Though some opposed the deal, Governor Mike Easley and city tourism officials - who will raise the county’s hotel tax 2 percentage points to help fund the project - say the hall is crucial to Charlotte as a destination for tourists.
All sectors of the media business will suffer from the weakened economy in 2008 and 2009, with a slump in local advertising particularly hurting newspapers and local TV, according to a new projection from Goldman Sachs.
Broadcast nets will experience…
The New York Times is shuttering its International Herald Tribune site; NYTimes.com will soon host the international news normally reserved for its sister website.
The move is not about cost savings, but rather about growth, NYTimes.com general manager Vivian Schiller…
Unilever’s Vaseline set forth on an unusual research project in a small town in Alaska. Setting up a storefront, the company began giving away free bottles of lotion and asking recipients to name the person who had recommended they come…
Meet the Press, the show hosted by Tim Russert for 17 years before his death last June, is beginning to slip in ratings.
Last month, CBS’s Face the Nation pulled ahead of Meet the Press for the first time in two…
Bloggers collectively create nearly one million blog posts each day, and half of bloggers believe blogs will be a primary source of news and entertainment in the next five years, according to Technorati’s 2008 State of the Blogosphere Report, MarketingCharts writes.…
Wal-Mart and Costco reported same-store gains in September, with sales rising 2.4% and 9% respectively. Sales at Target stores open at least a year fell 3%, writes Retailer Daily.
Below, fiscal results from the discount retail giants:
Sales of food and…
