Sports organizations forbidding political branding or sponsorships is nothing new.
Most sports organizations, having a diverse fan base spanning a wide range of beliefs and political affiliations, have preferred not to risk alienating a large chunk of those fans with political messaging.
But, the recent ban of a certain political figure on the cars in a certain popular sport seemed, to observers, more head-scratching than usual.
As reported by RACER, one team for the upcoming May 26 Indianapolis 500 race had requested to be able to promote Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former president Donald Trump on its car’s bodywork.
A representative for the Indy 500’s parent company, IndyCar, told RACER, “IndyCar does not approve sponsorships associated with elected officials, candidates for political office or political action committees.”
Therefore, the anonymous team would have to display more traditional sponsors on their cars, rather than the explicitly political endorsement they originally wanted.
Now, on the one hand, their decision did make sense, at least from a business standpoint.
Since Trump first took office in 2016, politics have become an incredibly divisive field, with the vitriol elicited by political debates and differences reaching perhaps its highest level in the lead-up to the 2024 election.
Most likely, IndyCar preferred not to risk their bottom line and alienate a significant chunk of their fans by appearing to endorse any particular political candidates.
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However, while IndyCar is a private business perfectly free to make its own decisions, it might have misunderstood its own fan base, at least from a political standpoint.
As Politico (by no means a right-leaning publication) explained in 2022, NASCAR fans in particular — and racing fans in general — have been overwhelmingly right-leaning, if not conservative, since the inception of the sport.
“Let’s Go Brandon” originated during a TV interview at a NASCAR race, after all.
Moreover, as explained by ECS Sports Management, a good 86 percent of Indy 500 fans are male, and an earlier story in RACER noted that 70 percent of those fans are over the age of 55 and 86 percent of them are white.
Which, of course, have been the demographics most consistently right-leaning and conservative, according to the Pew Research Center.
Considering those numbers, it would not seem all that likely, then, that a car sporting the visage of Donald Trump would be all that alienating for most of the Indy 500 fans.
If anything, many fans probably would have been happy to see it.
Again, IndyCar is free to make whatever business decisions it chooses. But it’s always good to know your audience.
