The legal trial involving meme coin LetsGoBrandon.com coin (LGBcoin) and the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) opened in a Miami-Dade County, Florida courtroom on Sept. 30.
The Let’sGoBrandon.com Foundation (LGBF) is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars, alleging that NASCAR wrongfully pulled back on a sponsorship deal with NASCAR driver Brandon Brown after initially giving the green light.
What is ‘Let’s Go Brandon’?
The phrase dates to October 2021 at Talladega Superspeedway in Lincoln, Alabama. After Brown’s first NASCAR Xfinity Series win, a live interview picked up the crowd chanting an expletive, ‘”F*ck Joe Biden,” directed at former U.S. President Joe Biden — the reporter said on air, “You can hear the chants from the crowd, ‘Let’s go, Brandon!’” The phrase quickly went viral as a political slogan.
Entrepreneurs Alexa Giuliani and James Koutoulas later launched LetsGoBrandon.com coin (LGBcoin), a meme coin inspired by the slogan. It was Giuliani who first proposed creating a meme coin to capitalize on the ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ movement.”
For context, meme coins are cryptocurrencies born from internet culture, some, like Dogecoin (DOGE), began as jokes before amassing large followings, while politically themed tokens like LGBcoin sit within a niche sometimes called “PolitiFi meme coins.”
Notably, Donald Trump mentioned LGBcoin during the 2022 American Freedom Tour. Giuliani and Koutoulas intended to use coin proceeds for political donations and sponsorship deals.
In December 2021, LetsGoBrandon.com coin struck a deal to sponsor Brown’s team, Brandonbilt Motorsports, with LGBcoin branding on cars and uniforms. To move forward, the sponsorship needed NASCAR’s formal approval.
According to court filings, the team submitted mockups to NASCAR senior manager Dale Howell on Dec. 25, 2021, as reported by Law360. Howell responded the next day with the now-disputed words: “these sponsors are approved.” The Foundation and team publicly announced the deal on Dec. 30.
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But within days, NASCAR reversed course, insisting the sponsorship had not been officially approved. The Let’sGoBrandon.com Foundation says that whiplash move crushed confidence in the coin and sent its market value spiraling.
On the stand this week, LGBcoin founder James Koutoulas told jurors that NASCAR’s sudden backtrack “cost the foundation $76 million” and led to a market collapse, with the token “dropping $380 million in one day” and “hitting zero by the end of the month.”
“We had a written email from the guy who had approved Brandon’s previous 15 sponsorships,” testified Koutoulas, as quoted by law360.
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NASCAR pushes back
NASCAR disputes that any binding approval was ever in place. Its rulebook allows it to refuse or rescind paint schemes and sponsorships. Howell admitted he sent the approval email but described it as a “rush decision” during the holidays, testifying he did not realize “LGB” stood for “Let’s Go Brandon.”
NASCAR Chief Impact Officer Eric Nyquist testified that he had met with Brown’s team weeks earlier to make clear that the league “would not sign off on any on-track promotion” of the slogan, citing concerns about linking NASCAR to language “disrespecting the Office of the President.”
Brown testifies
The Foundation has pushed back on NASCAR’s narrative, pointing to the written approval and arguing the reversal caused lasting reputational and financial damage. Brown himself, testifying remotely, said he was never told the LetsGoBrandon.com coin logo could not be used, per Koutalis.
Meanwhile, Mac Scott MacLeod, a business partner of Brown’s, acknowledged sending the Dec. 25 email to Howell. In a deposition, he said he didn’t expect a reply so quickly but admitted the team wanted to issue a press release promptly. He also revealed he had warned Brown that a “Let’s Go Brandon” sponsor might divide the fanbase, calling it a “big risk.”
While defamation and breach-of-contract claims have already been dismissed, the Foundation is moving forward under a false-promise theory, seeking to prove that NASCAR’s actions misled them into thinking the sponsorship was locked in.
The trial is scheduled to continue Oct. 6, when additional testimony is expected..