Circuit of The Americas has beefed up its marketing team and seen positive gains in its digital engagement. The nearly $400M racetrack outside of Austin, which has been the home of the U.S. F1 Grand Prix since ’12, continues to fight for awareness, attendance and revenue. While motorsports is COTA’s core business, it does not see itself as simply a racing venue but a year-round entertainment facility. The F1 race is the track’s flagship event, but concerts, X Games, other racing series and even business conferences add to the circuit’s revenue stream and appeal. Under the leadership of CEO Jason Dial, who took over in the fall of ’13, the racetrack has created a marketing department and increased its fan outreach and engagement. “A year ago, we really didn’t have a marketing team,” Dial said. “We are now building out. Our social and digital engagement has tripled and our digital traffic has quadrupled. That’s in four months.” In June, the racetrack appointed Dominic Iacono as its CMO and named Dean McBeth its VP of Strategy & Consumer Engagement. With those hires already bearing fruit, Dial told SBD Global that COTA’s big area for growth remains engagement. “At the end of the day, we are a content company, we are an entertainment company,” Dial said. “The more we can do and the better job we can do of really bottling up and packaging entertainment, we will continue to attract people out here.” A recently published independent study by Greyhill Advisors revealed that 1.1 million attended events at the track this past year (Oct. 1-Sept. 31). The economic impact for the Austin region was quantified at $897M. Dial said that this study was important for the track because it supports COTA’s vision of not only being a global destination for sports entertainment, but also an economic growth engine for the area.
