The Founder's Playbook for Landing and Maximizing a Major Sports Partnership
How we evaluated 10+ leagues, negotiated a Tier 1 deal on our terms, and built a performance-driven sports partnership from the ground up
On March 7-8, Super.com’s hot pink No. 51 Chevrolet circled the track at Phoenix Raceway in front of 50,000 fans, with Fox Sports and Amazon Prime broadcasting our brand to millions more at home.
It was the first time Super.com had a physical presence at a major American sporting event.
It took years of work, dozens of rejected pitches, and the entire team pulling in the same direction to make it happen.
Most tech founders don’t know how to approach brand sponsorships. They either overspend on sports sponsorships to chase prestige or dismiss them entirely as vanity spending.
We found a smarter third path with NASCAR: a performance-driven, test-and-learn partnership with measurable integration points, negotiated at a price point that most Tier 1 leagues reserve for much larger brands.
So I’m going to give you everything: the evaluation process, the negotiation, the activations, the early data, and every lesson we learned the hard way, so you dont have to.
But First, Why Sports Marketing at All?
Before getting into the how, it’s worth being honest about the why because most founders skip this step and end up in the wrong deal.
Building brand trust organically is a decade-long project. You do it through great products, good customer experience, and patience. We were doing that at Super.com.
But we also recognized that there’s a shortcut available to certain brands at certain stages. It involves borrowing someone else’s credibility.
When a brand fans already trust puts your logo on their car, schedule page, and fan zone, a portion of that trust transfers to you. You haven’t earned it yet, but you’ve been vouched for.
In a category as crowded as travel and savings, that vouching can be worth years of organic brand building.
So to get to where we wanted to go, we had two options:
Either spend 10 years building grassroots trust through our product alone, or find a partner whose fans already trust their sponsors and earn a portion of that trust by association.
NASCAR’s fans are documented as the most sponsor-loyal in all of professional sports. They know the brands on the car and actively buy from sponsors. That’s their fan culture.
For a company competing against legacy travel platforms with years of brand equity, that trust transfer was worth more than any banner ad.
But this only makes sense at a certain stage.
We were $200M+ in revenue and EBITDA-positive when we entered this negotiation. That matters.
Robinhood, on the other hand, spent around $50 million on NBA jersey patches across three teams when they were growing at all costs and had the funding to absorb such expenses.
We are not that company. We’ve always been cost-conscious and performance-driven.
The good news is that sports partnerships are more accessible than most founders think. The key is timing them right.
When you can fund it comfortably, instrument it properly, and commit to a 6–9 month runway before expecting returns, the investment starts to look very different.
That’s the stage to go for it.
The Playbook: 7 Things Every Founder Can Take From This
Here’s what I’d distill from our experience for any brand thinking about a major sports partnership:
1. Know your brand-building stage before you walk into any room
Early-stage, well-funded companies can splash on Tier 1 and absorb the risk. Everyone else needs to find a deal with a realistic ROI and a partner willing to work within their constraints.
Clarity about your own position is what keeps you from wasting 6+ months on the wrong negotiation.
2. Get the founder in the room
The business development team does the groundwork.
But the deal gets done when the CEO is across the table from the other side’s executive team, selling the vision with personal conviction.
Don’t delegate that.
3. Apply three filters to every potential partner: budget fit, performance angle, and flexibility
Any partner that fails one of these is the wrong partner for a performance-driven company.
4. Offer something beyond money
We brought 10 million MAUs, a co-branded landing page, and a ticket sales channel to the table.
That distribution made the deal work at a price point the league doesn’t normally offer.
Think about what you bring to the table that the other side also wants and lead with that.
5. Keep a budget for opportunistic activations
The Phoenix car deal was a DM that turned into a $50–60K national brand moment in two weeks.
Build flexibility into your activation budget so you can move fast when the right window opens.
6. Set a 6–9 month measurement horizon
Demanding immediate conversion from awareness plays kills good partnerships before they have a chance to work.
Watch the leading indicators monthly and save the lagging ones (bookings, subscriptions, revenue attribution) for the 6–9 month review.
7. Flexibility in a partner is worth more than prestige
The NBA, NHL, and NFL have incredible audiences but rigid structures.
NASCAR runs more like a founder-operated company that is willing to be creative, is designed for test-and-learn, and is genuinely interested in finding what works together.
A flexible partner at this tier is rarer than it sounds, and worth prioritizing over a famous name.
How We Evaluated 10 Leagues Before Landing on NASCAR
Before landing on NASCAR, we put more than 10 leagues and franchises through a structured evaluation.
Through KLUTCH Sports (part of United Talent Agency), we received proposals from more than 10 leagues and franchise options, including the NBA, MLB, MLS, NHL, NCAA conferences, and franchise-specific deals with teams like the LA Clippers, San Antonio Spurs, and Toronto Maple Leafs.
We took everyone seriously, built out what each would look like, and applied three filters to narrow it down:
Filter 1: Budget fit
Could we get a meaningful asset package within our range, without gutting the activations that mattered?
Filter 2: Performance marketing angle
Was there something measurable in the deal, like clicks, ticket sales, hotel bookings, or were we committing to pure brand spend with no attribution?
Filter 3: Flexibility
Would the league let us test, iterate, and reallocate budget if something wasn’t working? Or were we signing into a rigid multi-year contract with no room to move?
Most Tier 1 leagues failed on filters two and three.
The NBA and NHL are large, standardized organizations. They want long commitments at premium price points, and they are (mostly) not designed to be creative with smaller partners.
Why F1 was a no from the start:
The moment motorsports came up, F1 was the initial choice given its global reach, exploding U.S. audience, and enormous prestige.
But our core customer is the everyday American, middle-income, domestic traveler, looking to save.
F1 skews ultra-premium and is globally distributed, so we knew it wouldn’t work for us.
Demographic alignment in this kind of investment should not be overlooked at any cost.
Why NASCAR fit our criteria:
NASCAR hit on all three dimensions in a way nothing else on our shortlist did.
Demographics:
NASCAR’S demographics - 70 million fans, heavily U.S.-concentrated, middle-income, and travel-oriented Americans.
That’s an almost exact overlay with our customer base.
NASCAR fans drive to races, book hotels for race weekends, and are always looking to save on the things they care about.
We help people do exactly that.
Loyalty:
The sponsor-loyalty data on NASCAR fans is unlike anything we saw across the other leagues we evaluated.
NASCAR fans know the brands that support their sport, and they are meaningfully more likely to buy from a sponsor than from a non-sponsor.
For a brand trying to build credibility fast, that behavior is the point.
Flexibility:
This is what genuinely differentiated NASCAR from everything else on our list.
Their proposal hit every requirement we had set. They understood our budget, came in with creative activation ideas, and made it clear they were willing to pivot if something wasn’t working.
That kind of flexibility at this level of partnership is genuinely hard to find.
How We Negotiated a Tier 1 Deal on Our Own Terms
The KLUTCH relationship is worth dwelling on for a second, because the takeaway applies well beyond sports.
We first talked to KLUTCH in 2024 about NBA jersey patches, and it was the same type of deal Robinhood, Rakuten, Chime, and Ibotta had done. It was too expensive, so the conversation cooled.
But we kept the relationship warm anyway.
In August 2025, they came back with a broader portfolio, and this time, with the right option. That patience turned into the most significant brand partnership we ever did at Super.com.
A few lessons here:
Don’t burn relationships when a deal doesn’t close.
The agency that brings you the right opportunity may be the same one whose first pitch you had to decline.
The negotiation itself took six months. We aligned on the budget early, so the major back-and-forth was about which assets to weigh and how: display ads, field marketing, hotel integrations, and fan rewards access.
Finding the right balance took time.
Get the founder/CEO in the room
This was our biggest leverage point in the negotiation, and I’d give this advice to any founder doing a major partnership.
Don’t leave it to your business development team alone. Our CEO, Hussein, got on calls with NASCAR’s executive team directly, walking them through the Super.com vision, our customer obsession, and the kind of partnership we were looking to build.
That founder voice communicates conviction, long-term intent, and a solid relationship.
So when you want something important, be in the room yourself.
How we offered a win-win proposition that got NASCAR to say yes
Beyond the sponsorship fee, we brought something NASCAR genuinely wanted - access to our distribution.
Super.com has 10 million monthly active users. We offered to build a dedicated NASCAR landing page, create a bespoke savings experience for their fans, and sell discounted NASCAR tickets directly on our platform.
We essentially became a ticketing and savings channel for their fanbase. That co-distribution and co-branding are what made the deal work for both sides at a price point that fit our budget.
Think about what you bring to the table beyond the money, and lead with it.
Partnership inclusions:
Without getting into a specific amount (7-figure deal), what I can say is that official partnerships at this tier typically run 3–5x what we paid.
This was what we negotiated the package to look like:
Official Savings Partner of NASCAR - a credibility marker that is rarely available at the budget level we were working within
Full NASCAR and Track IP usage rights for our own marketing
Platform integration: hotel links on the NASCAR schedule page, exclusive discounted tickets, integration into Fan Rewards (400K+ members)
Weekly display ad takeovers of the Schedule and Weekend Schedule pages - high-traffic, trackable, with performance attribution built in
Field marketing access at 5 races per year
Experience, ticket, and merchandise budgets to reward Super+ members with exclusive access
What we had to give up to make the budget work: TV spots and some branded integrations that didn’t fit the budget.
But absolutely no regrets on that, given where we landed with the deal.
How We Turned a Cold DM Into One of Our Best Returns
The Official Savings Partner deal was the foundation.
But the activation that generated the most attention (Super.com’s fully wrapped, hot-pink No. 51 Chevrolet at Phoenix Raceway) wasn’t originally part of it.
Our Head of Partnerships, Dave, found it by scrolling social media on a random afternoon.
An influencer he followed had posted that car sponsorships were available for an upcoming race. He DM’d them, and they chatted. Within two weeks, we had a separate deal with Rick Ware Racing to serve as the primary sponsor on Cody Ware’s car at Phoenix Raceway.
What that activation delivered:
For a budget in the mid-5-figure range:
Full car wrap in Super.com’s brand colors, visible throughout qualifying, practice, and the race
Live TV coverage on Amazon Prime (qualifying and practice) and Fox Sports (Sunday race), with our car on screen throughout broadcast windows
Branded pit box, where the crew chief runs the race (front and center in every team shot)
Hauler branding in the garage, which doubled as the driver meet-and-greet zone and distribution point for our Super.com Hero Cards
Full pit and garage tour access, with the mechanical team wearing Super.com jerseys
Media access to the pre-race drivers’ meeting
Photo ops on the grid with the car and driver before the race
The social numbers:
Rick Ware Racing published 41 pieces of content across platforms:
9 posts on IG/FB/Threads
20 stories
12 posts on X
Total views: 172k+. Total engagements: 4600+. Total shares: 440+.
I’d value that at $20K+ in influencer-equivalent media value, and that’s before the original influencer who brokered the deal, who has 3 million Instagram followers and 5 million TikTok followers, finishes his content obligations.
So potentially, we will have a lot more to come.
The human side of the activation
After Phoenix, a Super+ member DM’d us asking if they could get one of the Hero Cards that fans were picking up at the hauler. Then more DMs came in.
Dave is now personally putting together swag packs for everyone who reached out. It will include signed merch, a personal note, and the full experience.
That’s not a metric you can put in a deck. But it tells you something important about what a physical brand activation does that a digital ad never can.
It creates a moment, and your most loyal customers (the ones already paying for your product) are the first ones to respond.
Keep a budget for opportunistic activations
The car deal wasn’t originally planned. It came from a random DM, negotiated in two weeks.
You should be nimble enough to layer on when the right window opens.
How We Think About Measuring a Sports Partnership
I want to be honest about measurement, because this is where most brands make their biggest mistake in sports partnerships.
You cannot immediately quantify a race activation or a two-week-old sponsorship integration.
Trying to do that forces bad decisions because purchases are intent-driven. Nobody books a hotel the day they see your brand on a race car.
A realistic conversion window is when a fan is planning their next race weekend months from now, and Super.com is already in their head because they’ve seen it across 10 different touchpoints.
Hence, our measurement horizon is 6–9 months before we expect to see meaningful booking attribution.
What the early data is showing
Even with that long-horizon view, the leading indicators are already moving.
Weekly Active Users from NASCAR:
1,650 unique weekly active users sourced from NASCAR integrations as of the week of March 9–15
This is up from near-zero in mid-February, trending up more than 1,000% since the partnership launched
NASCAR Hotel Link Clicks: 1,020 unique clicks last week on hotel links embedded in the NASCAR schedule page
This follows the same sharp upward curve from essentially zero before launch.
On the app side, roughly 3,000 customers have clicked on the NASCAR tile, with 23% converting to the Ticketmaster page for discounted tickets. Once Ticketmaster begins sharing monthly booking reports, we’ll have a clearer picture of how that intent is translating into actual purchases.
The framework I use to track a sponsorship like this
Social media value of partner posts (benchmarked against influencer rates)
Website traffic originating from NASCAR platform integrations
Hotel link clicks from the schedule page
Fan Rewards member conversion to Super+ over time
Long-horizon: Super+ membership attribution from the NASCAR fan base
The 7–10 touchpoint rule
It takes 7–10 brand interactions before a consumer reliably recalls a brand and considers acting on it.
One race obviously won’t get you there.
A year-long presence across weekly display ads, the schedule page, Fan Rewards, field marketing at 5 races, and car sponsorships sprinkled through the season might.
We never approached this partnership with the goal of converting a NASCAR fan on March 8th. We simply want to be the brand they already know when they need to make everyday savings and earnings
Set the right time horizon, track the right leading indicators, and don’t kill a compounding asset before it has time to take off.
What’s Next For Us
The season is just getting started.
Talladega is our next major activation.
It’s the first time we’ll have an on-ground field marketing presence, with the opportunity to engage directly with 100,000+ fans in person.
This is where Super.com moves from digital integration to a large-scale physical presence.
Fan Rewards integration is coming.
The plan is for 400,000+ Fan Rewards members to earn Super.com Rewards Points by becoming Super+ members or by booking hotels through us.
Eventually, fans will also be able to redeem Fan Rewards for hotels, Super+ memberships, and exclusive experiences.
When that goes live, it closes the loop between fan identity and our core product, creating genuine retention on both sides.
The 2027 vision: If this year delivers (and the early signals say it’s heading in the right direction), we scale deeper into the NASCAR ecosystem, including TV spots, commercial placements, sponsored voiceovers, and bigger activations throughout the calendar.
Year one will be the proof of concept.
The Bigger Picture
After our first major sports partnership, I can say they are a great marketing channel if you know which one to partner with.
NASCAR’s fans trust their sponsors because NASCAR has earned that trust over seven decades. When your brand shows up on that car, on that schedule page, at that hauler, you inherit a portion of that trust.
For Super.com, competing against legacy platforms with years of brand equity and household-name recognition, that trust transfer was the fastest, most credible path to becoming the brand that everyday Americans think of when they need to save.
Finding the right sport, the right demographics, the right price, and the right partner takes a lot of work. The patience to let it compound once you’ve done that work is ultimately what determines whether the investment pays off.
We are still early in that compounding curve, but everything we’ve seen since Phoenix tells us the investment will pay off.
Thinking about a sports partnership for your brand? Drop your questions in the comments and stay tuned for a follow-up once the Fan Rewards integration goes live and we have a full season of data to share.