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Turning Point Brands just put two of its nicotine pouch brands on the same NASCAR driver

ALP's first NASCAR deal put its logo on Riley Herbst's No. 35 Toyota in the Cup Series playoffs — the same car sister brand FRE has sponsored all season.

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ALPNASCARTurning Point BrandsFRERiley Herbstnicotine pouchesUS

Two nicotine pouch brands owned or co-owned by the same company are now attached to the same NASCAR car. On Sunday, ALP sponsored Riley Herbst's No. 35 Toyota in the Cup Series playoffs — a car that sister brand FRE has been on all season.

What happened

At the South Point 400 NASCAR Cup Series playoff race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on 4 October, ALP Pouch appeared on Riley Herbst's No. 35 Toyota Camry XSE for 23XI Racing, with branding on the car, Herbst's firesuit and the crew's polos. The company calls it its first NASCAR sponsorship. Herbst finished 18th after running all 267 laps.

"Having ALP on Riley's car in Las Vegas was a great fit for us. NASCAR fans are passionate, and we're excited to get the logo in front of them and see ALP represented on the track," said Lorenzo De Plano, CEO and co-founder of ALP Pouch.

ALP is a 50/50 joint venture between Turning Point Brands (NYSE: TPB) and Tucker Carlson Network. That matters here, because FRE — the pouch brand that partnered with Herbst and the same No. 35 team back in March, complete with a retail activation through the Herbst family's Terrible's convenience stores in Nevada — is also a Turning Point Brands brand.

ALP has been buying sports visibility all year: it was named official nicotine pouch partner of Matchroom Boxing in September, launched across 11 European markets in July, and introduced a "Frontier Collection" of new flavours in August.

Why it matters

Nicotine pouches can't be advertised the way most consumer products are, so the category's challengers buy visibility where regulation allows it: sports. Turning Point Brands now effectively controls two of the most visible pouch brands in the US — ZYN-competitor FRE and the faster-growing challenger ALP — and is pointing both at the same driver, the same team and the same Las Vegas fanbase. The March FRE deal was built as a "motorsports-to-retail loop" tied to Terrible's stores; the ALP deal reads as a brand-awareness play on the same platform.

It also shows how quickly ALP is moving. Founded in late 2024 as a direct-to-consumer business with no retail distribution, the company says it went from zero to nearly 1% of US convenience-store nicotine pouch sales in under 90 days, per Nielsen data cited in its own releases.

What's next

The FRE partnership runs across select race weekends for the whole 2026 Cup Series season; the ALP deal so far covers one playoff weekend. Whether ALP extends its NASCAR presence — and how Turning Point Brands splits its marketing spend between two brands racing on the same car — is the thing to watch as the season ends.

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