Scandals & Feuds ·
NASCAR Rejects Brandon Brown’s LGBcoin Sponsorship
Brown’s team said a NASCAR official had approved the deal. Other accounts said the approval process had not begun when the sponsorship was announced.
Brandon Brown announced a full-season sponsor for his No. 68 Chevrolet Camaro on Dec. 30, 2021. Within days, NASCAR rejected the LGBcoin sponsorship and paint scheme, a source with knowledge of the decision told CBS MoneyWatch. The cryptocurrency’s name evoked “Let’s go, Brandon,” the phrase that had turned the celebration of Brown’s first Xfinity Series victory into a vehicle for insulting President Joe Biden.
The decision left Brown’s team, Brandonbilt Motorsports, disputing not the rejection but whether NASCAR had previously approved the arrangement. The team said it had received written approval from a NASCAR Racing Operations official on Dec. 26, and spokesperson Max Marcucci said the official confirmed that approval by phone after the announcement. Marcucci described NASCAR’s action as a decision to “rescind the approval.” Sports Illustrated reported, however, that NASCAR had neither approved the sponsorship nor begun the approval process when the team announced it.
“The bottom line is that Brandonbilt Motorsports followed the standard process for sponsor and paint scheme approval and received approval from a NASCAR official empowered to make those decisions,” Marcucci said. He accused NASCAR leadership of backtracking. NASCAR issued no official statement, according to Sports Illustrated, and declined to comment to CBS. But the source who spoke to CBS said the team owner and driver had been told at a Nov. 5 meeting that “no form of this derogatory and vulgar euphemism would be allowed on any paint scheme or sponsorship.”
The phrase arose after Brown’s October victory at Talladega Superspeedway. During his televised post-race interview, a reporter suggested the crowd behind him was chanting “Let’s go, Brandon.” The crowd was instead directing a profanity at Biden. The reporter’s rendering became a political meme and a catchphrase among some conservatives, leaving Brown’s name attached to a message he had not delivered.
LGBcoin, a newly created meme cryptocurrency, called itself “not inherently political” on its website and did not acknowledge a connection to the phrase as an attack on Biden. Its founder, James Koutoulas, said the sponsorship was intended to market Brown as “America’s Driver.” Announcing the deal, he said: “If we do our job right, when you think of us, and you hear, ‘Let’s Go Brandon,’ you’ll think and feel, ‘Let’s Go America.’” The newly painted car had been scheduled to debut at Daytona in February.
Brown had described the chant as an obstacle to finding sponsors, telling The New York Times that he had “zero desire to be involved in politics.” NASCAR president Steve Phelps had also sought to distance the sport from it, saying before the final race of the 2021 season: “We do not want to associate ourselves with politics, the left or the right.”
For Brown, the victory had offered a different prospect. “This whole Talladega race win was supposed to be a celebration,” he told the Times, “and then it was supposed to be something that I was able to use to move up.” Instead, he said, the viral meme had pushed him toward silence as others sought to take it into politics. “I’m about the racing side.”