"She's very personable, good-looking and really comfortable on camera," said Bay Area advertising executive Bob Dorfman, who edits the Sports Marketer's Scouting Report. "And the deals that she's done are in athletics, which is right up her alley. Whether she can cross over into more nonperformance-oriented products remains to be seen."
Patrick, one of the few well-known female race car drivers in the world, would seem to be positioned to rev up her off-the-racetrack dealings.
At the least, her first win in 50 starts should help to put to rest the "Danica Kournikova" sobriquet, a snippy reference to Anna Kournikova, the glamorous tennis star who never won a title. Though winless until last weekend, Patrick had shaped her image with highly publicized appearances in a suggestive GoDaddy.com commercial and Sports Illustrated's annual swimsuit issue.
"You can no longer simply dismiss her as a sex symbol," Dorfman said. "She's a legitimate winner, which should help both her and her sponsors."
Patrick's commercial future will be shaped in part by her past endorsements. The GoDaddy.com and SI appearances probably have resonated with racing fans, more than 60% of whom are males. Yet Patrick is "a polarizing figure to some women," said Mike Bartelli, a Charlotte, N.C.-based director of Millsport Sports Marketing.
Reason enough, perhaps, for GoDaddy.com to have introduced a commercial in which Patrick is shown mentoring a young girl who wants to beat the boys in a go-kart race. "Quite frankly, we did it because it is something different from what we've done," said Bob Parsons, founder and chief executive of the company.
Sports marketers don't expect Ochoa to do anything differently if she breaks the Ladies Professional Golf Assn. record next weekend.
Last year, Ochoa earned a record $4.4 million in LPGA prize money.
She's already attracted more than a dozen corporate partners, including Aeromexico, Banco Popular, Rolex, Audi, Ping and Lacoste, and recently partnered with Oklahoma-based SEMGroup and Callaway. There is room, said Alejandro Ochoa, her brother and business agent, for a technology partner and perhaps a bottled water brand.
Compared with the less- accomplished Wie, Ochoa remains relatively invisible when it comes to U.S. sponsorships. Her previous agent, Rocky Hambric, said it wasn't for lack of trying.
