Free is My Favorite F-Word

Sports is an expensive industry. From a consumer standpoint, you will probably fork over a lot of money to attend events and support your teams of choice. Not to mention all of the money that will be spent on food, hotels, and travel. Last summer I made it my mission to find all of the free fun in one of the most lucrative industries in the world. All without leaving my couch (for the most part).

One of my favorite things about Formula One is the collectible driver cards. Each team prints and gives away prints of their drivers for fans to collect during the year. Fans that attend a race in person have a chance to get these cards during the autograph sessions but for those that can’t make it the teams still make it possible to obtain the cards. While it's not exactly free it's pretty close considering it only costs you the price of two international stamps to get cards for your favorite team. The only team that gives them away completely for free is Mercedes. They have a form that can be filled out and then the cards are mailed. Most of the other teams just ask you to pay the return postage to get the cards (that’s why you need two international stamps for each team).

Another free thing you can get if you're a F1 fan is a Red Bull Racing Paddock account. I joined when they first announced the program and I have no regrets. There’s different quizzes and activities you can do to earn points. The points are redeemable for different prizes throughout the year but that’s not the cool part. Sometimes they release prizes that are completely free and don’t even require points. I’ve redeemed all three of the ones they’ve done so far. The first one seemed like a joke until it showed up at my house. It was a commemorative piece of Max Verstappen’s race suit to celebrate his first world championship. The second piece was an art print of a project Sergio Perez participated in. The third piece hasn’t shown up yet but they keep reassuring me it’s on the way. Guess we’ll have to see what it is when it gets here!

Once I started to receive some of my driver cards in the mail it got me thinking, would it be possible to receive something from the other professional sporting leagues? It was the middle of the summer so I had a bit of time on my hands so I created a letter to send to as many teams as possible. I didn’t really know what would happen but spending the rest of the year receiving packages was not something I could have predicted.

The first thing I had to do was compile a list of contact information for all of the teams I wanted to contact. Most teams have a way to contact them on their website but some don't. There are a lot of professional teams in the United States so I didn’t spend a lot of time looking other places if the contact information wasn’t found on the website. Many have an email or form you can fill out so I copy and pasted the same message into all of them.

Being a massive football fan I started with the NFL. I had no expectations going into this because there was no way to know if I would get a response let alone something in the mail. Seven teams responded to my initial message and four of those sent me packages in the mail. The Cowboys, Jaguars, Patriots, and Raiders all put together packages filled with team memorabilia. The Patriots might have been one of my favorite packages to receive. It contained a schedule for the season and individual flags to represent each of their Super Bowl wins.

The MLB was by far the most responsive league. Out of 30 teams I received 16 responses. Five of those responses led to packages being delivered. I have two favorites from this collection. The New York Yankees sent the package that would start my collection so it has a special place in my heart. It was also filled with a lot of cool merchandise. That being said, the Boston Red Sox knocked it out of the park with their package. They sent similar items to many of the other teams (stickers, pictures, but my favorite part was the little packet of Fenway Park dirt. This might have been the coolest thing I could have received.

I received 3 packages from the NHL. I don’t really watch hockey but since I set out to reach as many teams as possible this included any league I could find contacts for, even if I wasn’t an avid watcher. The three packages I did receive were still really cool. The Stanley Cup took place right around the time I was doing this so getting not only a response but a package from the Colorado Avalanche was incredible. The foam hockey puck they sent me also became a centerpiece in my collection of memorabilia. The San Jose Sharks and Minnesota Wild were the other two teams that sent me collectibles like posters and stickers.

The NBA and NASCAR proved to be the hardest leagues to contact. Between these two leagues, I received one response. I am pretty happy with one response though because it was from Wood Brothers Racing. I don’t watch a lot of NASCAR but I do really like Harrison Burton that races for the Wood Brothers. It’s probably because he’s my age and he’s pretty cute. When the envelope showed up with a signed photo I was pretty excited.

I had to leave my couch to start my IndyCar collection but this was in part to me not thinking about adding them to the list of leagues I was contacting. I attended the St. Pete Grand Prix last month and I came home with lots of cool free stuff. I have to ask myself, is it really free if you have to buy a ticket to the event? It doesn’t cost extra so I guess that sorta counts.

Paddock Passes make it possible to collect a lot of driver cards because a lot of the teams have them next to their trailers. There are also autograph sessions you can attend when these prints are available and the drivers are there to sign them. I attended the IndyCar session and one of the feeder series sessions. The IndyCar session was so fun because I got to meet the driver I was there to see (see How A PodCast Led Me To An IndyCar Race for more on that) plus a lot of the others I had started to like. The feeder series session was a very different experience because you could tell most of these drivers had never really experienced something like this before. Most of them seemed very nervous but they were very talkative and excited to be there. Who knows, maybe someday they will be big names in IndyCar and I’ll be able to say I got their autograph when they were just starting.

Overall, it was an interesting experience trying to collect all this stuff. I had no expectations so to receive anything was exciting. Maybe I’ll do it again someday and I’ll get different responses. I know that the people stuck answering emails like mine have more important things they could be doing but it was nice to know that someone took time out of their day to entertain a bored college student.