Dale Earnhardt was very popular in the 1990s, but almost didn’t partner with the 1996 Olympics. On a 2023 episode of Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s podcast, Dale Jr Download, Kelly Earnhardt and Mike Davis talked to Joe Mattes about this. Mattes, who worked with Earnhardt Sr. in the late ’90s and now works at JR Motorsports, helped make the deal happen. At that point, Earnhardt had won seven championships and his team wanted to put the Olympics logo on his car to make the brand more popular and earn some money. But talks got stuck when Olympic officials asked for a big fee of one million dollars for the collaboration. Mattes talked about how hard it was to agree on a deal because of the high cost, almost ruining the partnership. He told me during the Olympics, “Listen, I don’t care where you’re from or how famous you think Dale Earnhardt is. We’ve been around longer than him and this is the Olympics, so you have to pay to participate.” No one is here in this office just to help us out.
“I asked, ‘How much does it cost to play?’ He replied, ‘Bring back a million dollars as a prepaid advance, we need to earn that first and then we can make a deal.’ After this, Mattes admitted he was unsure about discussing the matter with Earnhardt. However, when they did meet, Earnhardt was excited to know how the talks had gone.” After finding out he had to pay a million dollars, Earnhardt reacted by saying, “Are you kidding me? I have to hand over a million bucks right away?” Joe Mattes devised a plan to pay the $1 million fee for the Olympics on behalf of Dale Earnhardt and said, “No, that won’t happen.”
Joe Mattes contacted Revell, a Chicago-based company famous for making plastic model cars that were popular in stores. He talked to them about making a metal model of Dale Earnhardt’s 1996 Olympics car. After discussing how many they might sell, Mattes got Revell to agree to give him $700,000 upfront to help pay for the Olympics. After that, he decided to get the rest of the money from Dale Earnhardt Sr. He thought, “I’ll try to convince Dale to give me 300 thousand dollars.” He got 700 thousand dollars, then went back thinking Dale would be pleased, but he was still upset. He then asked Earnhardt Sr. to pitch in $300,000 more. With a total of $1 million from Revell and Earnhardt, they were able to secure the Olympic sponsorship.
