I ran across the web site of the Online Racing Championship Association while pursuing my current obsession with sports sims.
The ORCA is an organization that sponsors races that take place completely online. The interesting thing is they pay for real prize money — albeit relatively low stakes, in the $20/per race region — and they have a sponsor, Advance Auto Parts.
Individual cars also have their own sponsors, and this being autoracing combined with relatively customizable racing computer games, of course the virtual cars generally contain advertising for the sponsors just like real race cars.
ORCA has a nice page on its website outlining its Sponsorship and Advertising policies. Just $20 will let you sponsor a race, all the way up to a $500 buy-in to be a Series Sponsor.
That is just unbelievably cool. I’m just going to have to sponsor a car/driver and/or race at some point.