After choosing up his first NASCAR Xfinity Sequence win at Talladega this previous fall, Brandon Brown discovered himself in an ungainly predicament following the he delivery of the “Let’s Go Brandon” chant that roped the unbiased driver from Virginia into the political sphere, a development that he had recently lamented as hurting his career. Now, the saga continues off the monitor with the matter of whether or not or not NASCAR will log out on a possible full season of sponsorship for him.
On Thursday, Brandonbilt Motorsports introduced that cryptocurrency meme coin LGBcoin.io had signed on because the crew’s full-time major sponsor for the 2022 season. The crew unveiled Brown’s new No. 68 LGBcoin Chevrolet, that includes a purple, white, & blue paint scheme, with the phrase “Let’s Go Brandon” on the automotive.
Brandonbilt Motorsports’ announcement was reportedly untimely. According to Josh Peter of USA Today, NASCAR knowledgeable Brandonbilt Motorsports following their announcement that it was nonetheless reviewing the small print of the sponsorship and had not but given its approval for the automotive sponsorship.
This got here regardless of claims from Brown’s crew that NASCAR had offered written approval for the automotive’s paint scheme and sponsorship on the situation that the acronym LGB be used as a substitute of Let’s Go Brandon. Max Marcucci, a PR strategist who represents Brown and his race crew, maintained that the crew didn’t “freelance” and is unsure the place the disconnect was.
“We put collectively proposed automotive designs a month or so in the past earlier than any of this occurred as a result of we thought (Brown) was clearly the most effective man to naturally do a nationwide sponsorship with,” James Koutoulas, main holder of LGBcoin and founding father of Storm Capital Administration, instructed USA At present. “So we had it able to go and it has been a form a loopy week getting all of this negotiated and accomplished.”
After incomes his first profession victory on the Xfinity fall race at Talladega, Brown went from an underdog driver and shock winner to a mainstream cultural determine when a vulgar anti-Joe Biden chant in his winner’s interview was confused by an NBC reporter for chants of “Let’s Go Brandon”. The event proved problematic for Brown as he discovered his marketability to sponsors harm by means of guilt by affiliation.
Brown stated in a Newsweek op-ed that he declined quite a few media requests within the coming months, confessing that he was “afraid of being canceled by my sponsors, or by the media, for being caught up in one thing that has little to do with me.”
“The unlucky half is it is my title and my profession which can be at stake and the chance is excessive. If I do one thing unsuitable on this enviornment, my title as a driver falls off very quick,” Brown told Sports Business Journal. “Even a profession in NASCAR if I did not make it as a driver, attempting to get one other job within the neighborhood, I am all the time going to be the ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ man. I am all the time going to be identified for that and the way I dealt with this example.”
Brown said that NASCAR has additionally given him counsel on coping with the problem, and the sanctioning physique publicly distanced itself from anti-Biden chant throughout NASCAR president Steve Phelps’ year-end press convention in Phoenix.
“We don’t need to affiliate ourselves with politics, the left or the proper. We clearly have and we have all the time had as a sport super respect for the workplace of the president regardless of who’s sitting,” Phelps mentioned. “I believe it is an unlucky scenario. Can we like the truth that it type of began with NASCAR after which is gaining floor elsewhere? No, we’re not comfortable about that. However we are going to proceed to make it possible for we have respect for the workplace of the president.”
2022 will mark Brown’s fourth full-time season driving for his household crew. After making the Xfinity Sequence playoffs in 2020, Brown posted career-highs in high fives (three) and high 10s (9) alongside together with his first win in 2021.
