Generally speaking, money is tight
First General Motors cut ties with Tiger Woods. Now the troubled automaker is splitting with the Bronx Bombers.
GM, which might run out of money this month without government aid, didn’t renew its sponsorship with the New York Yankees. However, the company is negotiating a new deal with the crosstown rival New York Mets.
“We still want a presence in New York, and we can’t do both,” GM Northeast region spokeswoman Andrea Canabal told Bloomberg News. “We are looking at what we can do to save some costs.”
The Yankees and Mets are moving into new stadiums next season after drawing the most fans in Major League Baseball this year. GM’s contract with the Yankees expired in November, Canabal said. She wouldn’t disclose terms of the agreements.
Lonn Trost, Yankees chief operating officer, said Toyota and Audi will replace GM as the club’s auto sponsors. The new deals are for ballpark signage, as was the previous contract with GM. General Motors was a Yankees sponsor from 2006 to 2008.
The GM-Yankees split is the latest in a growing trend of GM ending long-standing sports relationships. Last month, GM’s Buick brand said it was concluding its marketing deal with Woods one year early. That contract was valued at $7 million per year. In September, it announced GM would not advertise during the Super Bowl.
• MORE CAR TROUBLE — At Dodge, things aren’t going so great these days, either. Earnhardt Ganassi Racing and Robby Gordon will be switching away from Dodges for the 2009 NASCAR season.
According to Yahoo! Sports, Earnhardt-Ganassi will be running Chevrolets exclusively, ending Ganassi’s Dodge connection that was supposed to run through 2010. Meanwhile, Gordon is consolidating his Toyota relationship; he’s run with Toyota’s TRD racing arm in off-road, sports car and IndyCar competitions.
• RIGGED ELECTION? — Given what’s transpiring in Illinois politics at the moment, the Chicago Blackhawks’ promotion to stuff the ballot box for next month’s NHL All-Star Game seems perfectly timed.
In Chicago, which originated “Vote early, vote often,” the Blackhawks set up “polling stations” around the city Tuesday where fans could cast their ballots for Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane and Brian Campbell.
Kane was the leading vote-getter among forwards in the Western Conference going into Tuesday with 325,017 votes.
No word on whether beleaguered Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich cast a ballot.
• CRUISIN’ WITH RAFER — This found its way into the e-mail in-box. And no, it wasn’t spam.
A cruise company is offering an opportunity to set sail with former Olympian Rafer Johnson on a Barcelona-to-Rome run in April 2009. Johnson won the gold medal in the decathlon at the 1960 Rome Olympics.
The price for the opportunity to hang with Johnson is $1,799 per person. Double occupancy, of course.
COMPILED BY STEVE CARP LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
