Nascar ‘Superfan’ Looking To Make Waves With His Business In The Sport

There are NASCAR fans, then there are NASCAR super fans.

NASCAR super fans are normally those who want more than just a seat in the grandstands when they attend a race; they want an all-encompassing experience: Pit passes, garage tours, maybe even a suite to watch the race from.

One fan however, wanted just a bit more access than even all that.

Dale Sahlin is the founder of Production Alliance Group (PAG) an events management company based in Tustin, California. The company manages events for many Fortune 500 companies, and has a production company, 3^rd Rail Productions covering the entertainment industry.

Sahlin’s success has given him the freedom to pursue his passion for NASCAR. And thanks in large part to PAG he is perhaps the sport’s biggest superfan.

For the last three seasons, PAG has been the entitlement sponsor for the Xfinity series race at Auto Club Speedway. The race, known as the Production Alliance Group 300, isn’t the first time Sahlin’s company has been involved in the sport. His involvement actually started in a very small way, and for very different reasons. He first became engaged in the sport at Phoenix Raceway in Arizona, when it was known as ISM Speedway.

“I mean, honestly I was a fan, I’ve been a fan my whole life,” he said. Adding with a chuckle: “So, when I started with the track, I really started small, I wanted a good parking spot in the infield for where I parked my bus, like by the driver lot. So, I became a sponsor, a very, very small track sponsor.”

As time went on Sahlin became more invested in the sport and started looking for ways to grow his business at the track.

“There was ultimately a plan for that,” he said. “But then they came around and said, ‘why don’t you be the entitlement sponsor?’ And I thought ‘Hey, why not?’

“And that’s when it became the Production Alliance group or the PH 300.”

That first race for the PAG was in 2019. And as the race sponsor that got Sahlin the ultimate fan experience: posing in Victory Lane with race winner Cole Custer (Custer also won this year’s PAG 300).

“I had no idea who Cole was, honestly,” Sahlin admitted. “I wasn’t really a big follower on the Xfinity side; more, maybe the big names, but I didn’t really know Cole.”

It was in Victory Lane that day that someone stuck a business card in Sahlin’s pocket and said, ‘call me.’

That someone turned out to be Warren Vigas who at the time was Cole Custer’s business manager. And that call became a meeting later that night with Custer and Vigas.

“We sat around campfire that night,” Sahlin said. ”And he’s like, ‘forget the track, man. You got to get with the teams.”

That led to the PAG sponsorship with Stewart-Haas Racing and Cole Custer in the Xfinity series. A sponsorship that followed Custer into the Cup series and now includes Stewart-Haas driver Chase Briscoe as well. All the sponsorships have not only provided Sahlin unrestricted access to the track, but to the drivers as well.

“These are the guys I vacation with; I do life with now” he said. “I consider them pretty dear friends.”

Being in the event planning business and trying to grow that business in the NASCAR space however can be tough. Especially given that the event space in NASCAR is already pretty much spoken for. CSM productions led by Jay Howard has been the event planner of choice for NASCAR for over 30 years. If you’ve seen a pre-race concert, an elaborate stage setup for driver introductions, or confetti flying around in Victory Lane, there’s a good chance CSM had a hand in it. Sahlin said he has a tremendous amount of respect for CSM and what they do and has no plans to encroach on their territory. He’s still finding a way to get involved, however.

“You know, NASCAR is so big, and they have so many events,” he said. “A lot of other things like IMSA. I did the IMSA awards… For Cup this year in Phoenix, I did that media day. They’re giving me slices here and there.”

While those little slices are important to his business, there are other advantages to the NASCAR sponsorships such as the B2B marketing opportunities. Warren Vigas is now the business manager for driver Joey Logano, the 2018 Cup champion, and someone Sahlin also counts among his NASCAR friends. Logano helped secure PAG and Sahlin an account with Planet Fitness, one of Logano’s sponsors.

“I’ve done Planet the last two years because of Joey,” he said. “Joey is best friends with the CEO, and he just said, ‘you gotta use my boy, Dale’. Well, that’s all it took.”

And it’s those B2B introductions that are one of the best things about his relationship with everyone in NASCAR.

“Obviously the B2B side, you know, it’s tough,” he said. “But these do open doors and we do get to talk to a lot of people.

“I’m getting put in places and (with) people and then I got to do my work. That’s my job from there… they say, ‘right, Dale, now we can open the door for you, which you probably never got to this door, but now you got to handle it.’”

Just as he was starting to open those doors and grow the business though, Covid shut down the world, and NASCAR. Sahlin said PAG was able to pivot and adapt, picking up business with government entities.

“We built the largest vaccination site in the city of Chicago for FEMA,” he said. “FEMA knows how to build tents and do little things; they don’t know how to push eight to 10,000 vaccinations a day; like moving people through an event. That takes event people.

“So, when you say adapt, absolutely. My production guys were being site operations guys at a vaccination site in the city of Chicago and have nothing to do with production. There’s no sound, there’s no lighting. That’s what they were doing because it paid very well. And we adapted.”

Now the world is opening back up with Covid cases dropping. Many of the corporate sponsors, however, are continuing to work in a hybrid model, and many events that were once in-person are being scaled back or being done remotely. But PAG is again adapting. A recent example is Expedia which, has It’s done in the past, used PAG for their annual meeting.

“It’s great,” Sahlin said. “It’s killer huge in Vegas. It went dark two years ago and now we’re bringing it back; a little less, budgets came down, it seems like that’s the common thing, the budgets are coming down. It’s like, ‘Hey, we still want this’, but they’re like, ‘Hey, you spent 2 million last year, you got a million this year’, but it needs to look like that.

“So we’re starting to see a little bit more of that. But you know, I’m telling you, I’m not the best, you know, advocate, whatever. But I believe in my heart that yes, people will still always gather you and the events will come back. They just might not be at the scale that they did, or it’ll take some time to scale ’em back up.”

And now that NASCAR is back, NASCAR superfan and business owner Dale Sahlin will continue trying to grow his brand in the space, a space beyond just a parking spot for his bus. He wants to continue to earn the respect, and trust, from those in NASCAR and earn more business for PAG.

“Before Covid, it was like, ‘just let me do an event for you guys. Let you, let me see how my guys work’. It’s all about my guys. It ain’t about gear. We have excellent gear. It’s not about gear. It’s about my team, my team, you know, it’s kick ass.”

“Yes, we are definitely making waves.,” he said. “We’re making our waves and it’s coming back. We’re getting bites where we can, and there is enough business to go around. That’s the thing, I mean, CSM has a great dent in this business, but there is more business out there with NASCAR.”