Attending the Jeep King of The Mountain race opened our eyes to a few blatantly obvious concerns that we all should be concerned with. Jeep has been promoting and putting on these races for four years now. This race is by invite only, and to get invited you need to be a Norba champion, UCI champion or in contention for one of these titles or have a good marketing person working with your team. They have two open spots for other Pros to show up and take a try at a large payout. Jeep gives up a share of more than $100,000 in prize money throughout the three race series and the keys to a Jeep Compass to the overall winner of both the men’s field and the females! Norba on the other hand offers no purses for its Pro DH riders? In fact last year Go-Ride put together a collection to raise money for the Pro riders. At the end of the 2002 season Norba lost 4 of the 8 sponsors it had and of the remaining ones only 2 are contributing money.

Having corporate sponsors is something that racing ultimately requires. There are expenses such as insurance, rental fees, paramedics, to name a few. Professional riders also would like to receive a check from the venue and its sponsors. This will only become a reality with outside help. Companies have advertising budgets and many of them spend millions upon millions a year just to get their name out and acquire name recognition. If companies are willing to pay the national newspapers the average rate of $100,000 per full page ad per day, they should find it in their interest to get 4 months of constant exposure on the Norba race circuit. Companies within the biking industry don’t have this kind of money. Well typically they don’t, although there are a few that would probably be able to offer $50,000 a year no problem. I am talking about the big three, Specialized, Trek, and Giant. 

Why not advertise and promote at the same time? That is unlikely to happen so outsiders must be pursued.

Norba needs to put together a team of two or three people to present a sales pitch to select companies marketing personnel. They would need someone good with financials and someone with marketing experience and a strong seller to close the deal. If Norba is as all powerful as they pretend to be wouldn’t the VP of marketing at Nissan USA love to hear from them? Well maybe they are not quite the force they pretend to be. And I almost forgot financial control and understanding is something Norba cannot grasp. This is one of the beautiful things about capitalism, if there is demand and need for a good the market will provide said good. Meaning an outside source will create what the governing body is not able to, or in this case may not want to! Are there any takers out there?