Welcome to the Sponsorship Desert

� Not so good ... various sources are reporting that both the Indy Racing League and the N-word are facing serious sponsorship issues.

The irascible Robin Miller reports that a shocking number of drivers are walking around looking dazed and confused because they are, for now, rideless.

Many other sources like this one say that Nov. 17 -- the day after the N-word season mercifully comes to an end, finally  --  will be BLACK MONDAY for N-word with a ton of people laid off.

Why? Aside from potential sponsors hacking their marketing budgets to the bone, the return on investment of racing sponsorship is more dicey than ever.

IndyCar's return on investment hasn't penciled out for a long time if you really take an anal accountant look at it. $5 million to be a big-dog sponsor and get 1.0 TV ratings at the most. Voodoo ROI at best. Open-wheelers hoped unification would help boost interest (and therefore ROI) but a 1.0 rating is a 1.0 rating, no matter how you look at it.

N-word did a couple of things. They let the cost to compete get INSANE -- much more than the IRL -- and they gave in to the thinking that if some is good, a ton more is better! In an effort to milk every last dollar out of fans, N-word expanded its schedule and added in the artificial Race for the Chase playoffs. Even hard-core race fans can't keep it up 42 weeks out of the year, let alone pay ever-increasing ticket prices. The results have been empty seats at tracks and falling fan interests.

I would also add, as an open-wheel partisan, that the quality of the N-word on-track product is crap, as evidenced by the most-recent Festival of Red Flags. This race lasted an estimated 19 hours, featured TWO red flags, including one caused by two cars that appeared to be humping each other. The race was so long that ABC finally gave N-word the IRL treatment  -- moved the marathon from ABC to ESPN2 to make way for America's Funniest Home Videos. (I'm not making that up.)

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Bottom line is even if racing did everything right, it would be tough, given consumers' mass decision to stop spending money.

Here's an radio story on the N-word's woes.