Last season Brandon Brown won the NASCAR Xfinity Series race at the Talladega SuperSpeedway. It was his first career Xfinity Series win, a moment that he will never experience again and something that should have been celebrated. Instead of smiles and good times it has been only hell for Brandon. Now, almost a year later it has been a struggle week in and week out to race and it is all centered to a single moment of his winning interview.
While Brandon Brown was being interviewed by NBC Sports reporter Kelli Stavast fans where chanting “Fuck Joe Biden” loud enough that it was picked up clearly on the tv. Stavast said during the interview and mid fan chants that the fans were chanting “Let’s go Brandon” as most likely it was to cover up the swearing on tv. Almost instantly “Let’s go Brandon” became a political meme used by the Republican Party as a cleaner version of slander towards the U.S. President while also having it mean the same thing as before.
Over the next several weeks and months sports fans all around the world were chanting “Let’s go Brandon” at packed sporting events as the saying got more and more publicized. Many people associate the words now with Joe Biden due to the high inflation percentages and gas prices, nevertheless almost a full year later and the saying is still very much alive as Joe Biden’s approval rating is at 38.4%, according to a poll by FiveThirtyEight.
Since that day in October Brandon Brown has been seen as a controversial political figure despite him not actually doing or saying anything. Brown is part of the ownership and is a driver of his own team, Brandonbilt Motorsports. Brown and his team have struggled heavily to find sponsorships as many companies do not want to be associated with him. Due to the lack of funding Brandon Brown has now had to give up his full-time seat at Brandonbilt Motorsports and have other drivers who have sponsorship backing race. Brown is set to compete at the Indy Road Course for Mike Harmon Racing, overall he will race for Brandonbilt Motorsports in the future, but now on a part-time basis due to the lack of funding. It is not the team itself that lacks funding but mainly the driver Brandon Brown as he is now being looked at as controversial.
Brandon said, “I’m still viewed as a political figure,” in a statement. “I can be viewed as divisive because of the chant. It’s really hard to convince companies that, ‘Hey, that’s not me. That’s just what the crowd was chanting.’ It does make it hard.”
There have been millions of dollars' worth of sales in ‘LGB’ merch as you can buy a “Let’s go Brandon” shirt on Amazon for as little as $15, despite all the money being made Brandon Brown has received nothing whatsoever in sales. There is also a cryptocurrency called LGB Coin, similar to the Dogecoin meme currency, the price of a single coin is worth $0.0000000005398 so far. LGB Coin did try to sponsor Brown earlier in the NASCAR season, but the sponsorship was rejected by NASCAR.
It is still possible for Brandon Brown to race the rest of 2022 on his team for select races and other teams, but overall it is guaranteed that he will be able to
No matter who you support party wise politics should be kept out of sports, now due to a group of fans and a reporter trying to cover background noise up on live tv, Brandon Brown’s career has been a struggle, a struggle that could possibly have him out entirely of the top NASCAR series in the next several years due to lack of funding.
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