← All case studies Case Study 01 · Where the method came from

Every moto brand said no. So I stopped asking moto brands.

A Wisconsin water company. Then a platform nobody had ever put on a dirt bike. Both of them were sponsors this sport did not have until somebody went and got them.

Read this first. This is my own record, not a client result. I am publishing it because it is the only sponsorship history I can show you end to end — the bad decks, the cold emails, and the public documents that prove it happened. Launchpad athlete case studies go up as they finish theirs.

AthleteDavid Pulley Jr. #138
DisciplineSupercross · Privateer
Brands brought inNon-endemic
Period2020–2026
StatusYear 4 with current title sponsor
Cold contact to signature3–4 months

The receipt, before the story

A Wisconsin water brand, on a Supercross bike.

Not a mock-up and not a logo slide. This is the jersey, on the bike, at Monster Energy Supercross rounds.

David Pulley number 138 racing a Honda CRF250R, Northern Chill America's Water and DMP Motorsports across the chest, Monster Energy Supercross banner behind. — 21 February 2021. Northern Chill in chest position on the jersey, mid-race.

Close crop: Northern Chill, America's Water, Born True Polar Wisconsin, above DMP Motorsports. — “Born True · Polar, Wisconsin.” A town most of the paddock could not find on a map.

David Pulley number 138 in a pink race jersey on the Supercross start straight, Northern Chill America's Water branding across the lower back. — Same brand, back of the jersey, on the start straight.

And the sanctioning body's own paperwork.

Row 21 of the official 250SX line-up sheet, Denver, Round 16 of 17, 30 April 2022.

Monster Energy AMA Supercross Denver Round 16 of 17, April 30 2022, 250SX starting line-up. Row 21: number 138 David Pulley, Lake Elsinore CA, Yamaha YZ250F, sponsors DMP Motorsports, Sominium, Northern Chill, TBS Construction. — DMP Motorsports, Sominium, Northern Chill, TBS Construction. Open the official line-up sheet →

A bottled water brand from a small town in northern Wisconsin, on a Supercross entry list in Denver. That did not happen because I was fast. It happened because I sent them something no moto brand had bothered to send them.

01 · the wall

I contacted just about every brand in the industry.

Every gear company, every parts company, every aftermarket brand I could think of or find an address for. That is the standard privateer playbook and I ran it properly. Deck attached, results listed, follower count in the header.

It does not work, and the reason it does not work is arithmetic. There are a few hundred endemic moto brands and several thousand riders asking them for money. Every one of those brands already has a sponsorship budget that is spoken for, usually by riders with better results than yours. You are the four hundredth email that week making the same offer.

The brands were not wrong to say no. The offer was bad.

02 · 2020–22 — outside the industry

Northern Chill had never heard of Supercross. That was the point.

A moto brand already sells to moto fans. Putting a logo on my bike moves them sideways — it reaches an audience they are already paying somebody else to reach. There is no new customer in it, which is exactly why the budget is tight and the answer is no.

A bottled water company from Polar, Wisconsin is a completely different conversation.⁸ They had a product every rider, mechanic and fan at a stadium event drinks, in a category with no moto presence at all, in front of an audience they had never touched. I was not asking them for charity. I was offering them a market.

They signed in 2020. By 21 February 2021 they were in chest position on my jersey, and by that March they were printed first in my sponsor line on the official AMA entry list at Arlington — title position.¹ They were still there a year later at Glendale² and at Denver.³ On camera in March 2022 I called them “my title sponsor, best water out there in the game.”⁴

Then the thing I actually care about happened. Northern Chill appears on Partzilla PRMX Racing's published team sponsor list for the 2021 season, and again for 2022.⁵ They are not on the 2023 or 2024 lists. A bottled water company from Polar, Wisconsin spent two seasons on a Supercross team's sponsor board.

Here is the order it happened in, and every step of it is dated.

Instagram story dated September 10 2020: cases of Northern Chill water at home, captioned Coming home to some cases of at drinkchillh2o, hashtag brandambassador. — 10 September 2020. First cases at the house. *#brandambassador*.

Instagram story dated October 13 2020: stacked pallets of Northern Chill bottled water in a warehouse, tagged at drinkchillh2o. — 13 October 2020. Pallets, not a sample box.

September 2020 — cases at my door. October 2020 — pallets. February 2021 — their logo on my jersey at a Supercross round. March 2021 — the earliest dated appearance of Northern Chill anywhere near PRMX. 2021 and 2022 — two full seasons on the team's sponsor board.⁵

I was roughly six months ahead of the team. I am still not going to write that I am the sole reason they came, because no public document proves intent and this page does not make claims it cannot back. But the order is not in question, and it is the order that matters: a brand with no history in this sport showed up on my bike first, then stayed in the sport for two more years.

The money is not in the brands that already sponsor your sport. It is in the brands that do not know your sport exists yet.

That is the whole method. Everything I sell now — the Rookie Deck, the Brand Audit — is a way of getting an athlete to that sentence faster than it took me.

03 · What the pitch actually looked like

These are my real decks. They are not good.

I am putting them up because every athlete reading this has written the same slides, and nobody will show them theirs.

2022. “I want to help you.” Help them do what? No number, no audience, no deliverable, no ask.

2023. Nineteen words about me before a single word about them — and “I am confident with my talents” is not an argument a partnerships manager can take to their CFO.

Read those two slides as a brand. Both of them ask for something. Neither of them offers anything specific. “More exposure to your company name” is not a business case — it is a hope, and there is a typo in it.

The cold emails had the same problem in longer form. Mine opened: “I am a current Professional Supercross Athlete, I would like to partner with you. I have an opportunity that I feel would help you guys continue to grow your platform and bring more awareness to your company.”

Feel is doing all the work in that sentence. There is no opportunity described anywhere in it — just a man announcing his job title and hoping.

04 · What changed

Three fixes. None of them were design.

Stopped opening with myself

“I am a professional Supercross athlete” is the least interesting fact on the page to somebody with a marketing budget. The first line has to name what they get. Race results move to the back as evidence, not to the front as the argument.

Targeted brands with no presence in the sport

Endemic brands are a saturated auction you will lose. Non-endemic brands are an unclaimed market where you are the only person who has ever called. Water, finance, tech, food, trades — if their customer is at a stadium on Saturday, you have a case.

Put a priced, tiered, deliverable-backed ask on the page

Fender spot, jersey spot, product display, trackable discount code, named posting days. A brand can price that. “Partnership opportunities available” gets filed and forgotten.

A later tier slide. Every line is a thing a brand can price, schedule and measure. That is the entire difference.

05 · 2023–2026

Then it happened again, bigger.

The method is only worth anything if it repeats. It did.

2020–22

Northern Chill

A Wisconsin spring water brand becomes title sponsor of a Supercross privateer and appears in title position on the official AMA entry list, and inside a year is on another team's sponsor board.¹^,⁵

Feb 2023

OnlyFans

A platform with no history in powersports signs on as title sponsor. First contact was around November–December 2022. Signature came three to four months later, in February 2023. The team runs as DPMX OnlyFans Racing Yamaha.⁷ Long-form documentary work on OFTV was part of the deal from year one, not something bolted on later.

2024–25

Renewed, twice

Second and third consecutive seasons with the same title sponsor. A first deal can be luck or a favour. A brand re-signing you two years running means the numbers worked on their side of the table.

2026

Year four

Fourth consecutive season with the same title sponsor, with the 2027 renewal in progress. Renewals are the real result — anyone can get one yes.

In a 2024 interview I described it plainly: getting “out of the box sponsors… that aren't anywhere near close to our sport, that I brought into our sport.”⁶

06 · The numbers

Every figure here has a date on it.

Sponsors do not trust round numbers with no source. Neither should you. These came off platform analytics and public profiles, dated where they were taken, and they will be stale eventually.

Combined audience

117.6K

38.7K Instagram · 78.2K TikTok · 725 X. TikTok checked live 28 Jul 2026.

Instagram engagement

6.94%

The figure brands ask about once they are done asking about reach.

Total TikTok likes

2.1M

Cumulative, against 78.2K followers. Checked live 28 Jul 2026.

Direct platform fans

3,500+

Subscribers on the current title sponsor's own platform.

2027 event footprint

23+

17 Supercross rounds Jan–May, plus 2–3 Arenacross.

87.8%

male audience — the exact demographic most powersports and outdoor brands are trying to buy

22.2%

international, concentrated in Brazil, France, Australia and the UK

07 · What this does not claim

Read this part too.

This is my own record, not a client result. I have not published a Launchpad athlete case study yet and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
I am a privateer. None of these deals came with a bike, a truck, a mechanic or a factory ride. They bought seasons.
No contracts, agreements, invoices, rates or deal values appear on this page, and none will. Those belong to the brands as much as to me. You are seeing my own decks and my own numbers, nothing that was sent to me in confidence.
The audience figures were verified on 25 July 2026 and they move every week. If they matter to your decision, ask me for a current screenshot.
It took me roughly two years of being wrong to work this out. The products I sell are an attempt to shorten that for someone else — not a guarantee that it will work for everyone.
Getting a non-endemic brand to say yes is harder than it sounds here. Most still say no. The difference is that they say no for reasons you can fix.

Sources

Monster Energy AMA Supercross, Arlington 1, Round 10 of 17, 250SX final entry list, 13 March 2021 — supercrosslive.com
Monster Energy AMA Supercross, Glendale, Round 5 of 17, 250SX final entry list, 5 February 2022 — supercrosslive.com
Monster Energy AMA Supercross, Denver, Round 16 of 17, 250SX line-up, 30 April 2022 — live.amaproracing.com
“What The Pros Ride” Season 2 Ep. 5 — David Pulley, 7 March 2022 — youtube.com
Partzilla PRMX Racing team page, 2021 and 2022 team sponsor lists — The Privateer's Story
“Supercross Secrets: David Pulley's Wild Journey”, 9 July 2024 — youtube.com
Monster Energy Supercross official entry list, DPMX OnlyFans Racing Yamaha — supercrosslive.com
Northern Chill, naturally alkaline mineral spring water, Polar, Wisconsin — northernchill.com