NASCAR fans are livid after discovering that the organization has banned driver Brandon Brown’s sponsorship with “Let’s Go Brandon”-inspired cryptocurrency meme coin LGBcoin, since the chant is a slight against Joe Biden.
According to The Washington Post, a NASCAR official has stated that the organization “made clear during a November discussion about the potential sponsorship that it would not allow any reference or imagery based on the chant.”
The chant is a knock against Joe Biden, and was started after Brandon Brown won a race and NBC reporter Kelli Stavast claimed fans were cheering “Let’s go Brandon,” though they were clearly chanting “F*** Joe Biden.”
Since then, chants of “Let’s go Brandon” have broken out across the country, and it has become a meme to the point where a cryptocurrency has been named after the chant.
Unfortunately for Brandon Brown — who was just a NASCAR driver that never made his political views known before this — after the chant went viral, he was having a lot of trouble finding sponsors. It seems that no company wanted to be connected to the chant, even if Brown himself had nothing to do with it.
“It got extremely difficult for us,” Brown said in an interview with the Sports Business Journal. “If you’re a national corporation, that means you sell to all consumers … and unfortunately, when you get dragged into the political arena, people want you to take a side I’ve never been put in a position where it’s, ‘OK, what side are you on? Left or right?’ So it’s hard for a brand to want to attach to somebody who might be kind of divisive in their consumer base.”
In that same interview, he apparently gave up on trying to hide his views, stating that he was a “Republican” but is “mainly focused on racing and not politics.”
As he was obviously having a difficult time finding a sponsor, the only logical option left was to accept the offer from LGBcoin. Unfortunately for him, NASCAR decided it was too political.
“NASCAR on Tuesday decided against approving a sponsorship based on the anti-President Biden slogan ‘Let’s go, Brandon,’ according to a NASCAR official with direct knowledge of the deliberations,” the Washington Post report said.
The problem was, Brown had already received approval from NASCAR for the sponsorship, and had moved forward with the process.
“We received written approval on the sponsors from a NASCAR Racing Operations official on December 26, 2021,” Maxwell Marcucci, a spokesman for the driver, said in a statement. “The team subsequently moved forward with an announcement only after being provided with this approval.”
“The sponsor approval was unambiguous — the first four words of the email from NASCAR state, ‘The sponsors are approved,’” the statement read. “The only feedback offered was related to minor graphic design changes to ensure legibility on the track at 170mph.”
After receiving the initial approval, Brown’s team made the announcement on social media.
I’m excited to welcome @LGBcoin_io aboard my No. 68 Chevrolet Camaro as our 2022 NASCAR Xfinity Series full season primary partner!
Press release: https://t.co/yWfkonk8vO pic.twitter.com/s8PkfCtnVD
— Brandon Brown (@brandonbrown_68) December 30, 2021
Then, all of a sudden, NASCAR came out and announced that the sponsorship had not been approved.
An official told the Washington Post that “NASCAR’s formal decision was not a reversal … but the governing body’s first and final word on the matter.”
“The misunderstanding over the sponsorship thrust NASCAR into an unwelcome political spotlight for several days,” the Washington Post report said. “While segments of stock-car racing fans relished the prospect of cheering a car emblazoned with an insult of the president, such messaging would have run counter to NASCAR’s efforts to prevent stock-car racing from being used as a backdrop for partisan politics and divisive imagery.”
Many conservatives took to Twitter to denounce the decision, and to point out NASCAR’s hypocrisy. If the organization really wanted to avoid “partisan politics and divisive imagery,” why did they allow Bubba Wallace’s car to feature #BlackLivesMatter emblazoned along the side?
I’m done watching NASCAR, we can have a Black Lives Matter car on the track but not this? It’s all become way to political.
— Jay Broadway (@bricksalesman1) January 5, 2022
