Advertising sales for its radio broadcasts have become a bright spot for International Speedway Corp., at a time when its tracks are behind on advance ticket sales and the company still has race title sponsorships to sell.
The company’s Motor Racing Network has signed 16 new advertisers this year and sold out of inventory through June in live broadcasts of Sprint Cup, Nationwide and Camping World Truck series races. It is on track to increase ad sales by 10 percent this year.
The sales success is an improvement from a year ago, when MRN failed to sell out a race, and ISC executives said it was largely a result of an improved advertising market and efforts to build stronger relationships with media-buying agencies and sponsors.
“The product is still a good product,” said Peter Casarico, ISC director of integrated media sales. “This day and age in radio, where you have issues with folks looking for safe programming in the world of talk radio, they know sports and live broadcasts of NASCAR is a safe place to put their money.”
Speedway Motorsports Inc., which owns Performance Racing Network and broadcasts races from its eight tracks, hasn’t seen the same uplift. Its sales are flat with 2011, and Mike Burch, SMI vice president of national sales and marketing, said that they’ve found that companies tend to buy quarterly rather than annually.
ISC gets help on its ad sales from Dial Global, which merged with Westwood One last year. The company has worked with a Dial Global subsidiary on sales for more than a decade.
Of its 16 new advertisers, ISC’s largest commitments on MRN have come from AutoTrader, Barbasol, Career Education Corp., Carquest Auto Parts, Cat Footwear, Farmers Insurance, Interdynamics, Outback Steakhouse, Quicken Loans and Sports Authority.
Both Quicken Loans and Outback Steakhouse came into the sport this year through sponsorships with Stewart-Haas Racing. Outback is activating its sponsorship on MRN by doing a sponsored segment called “Bloomin’ Monday,” offering a free Bloomin’ Onion appetizer with any purchase to all customers on Monday after each Sprint Cup race in which its driver, Ryan Newman, finishes in the top 10. It runs the spots in the last third of races.
That was a deal that came as a result of Casarico contacting Outback to gauge its interest in advertising.
“NASCAR in years past was very popular, and people used to say the phone would ring,” Casarico said. “It’s still popular, but there’s been a change in our culture with us going out and being more proactive and telling our stories.”
