NASCAR is sharpening its focus on driving two key business metrics: event attendance and ratings.
A new effort pares back multiple initiatives being promoted across the sport to instead focus on these two performance indicators. The effort is being led by the sanctioning body and COO Steve Phelps, but it also involves tracks, media partners, teams and other stakeholders.
The strategy has been communicated to stakeholders in recent weeks and comes after a first half of the season that saw continued attrition in attendance and viewership.
“A couple weeks into the season, we were seeing some of the metrics not being where we wanted them to be,” said Pete Jung, NASCAR’s vice president of brand marketing. “Some of the things [affecting declining metrics] are probably out of our control, but there are a lot of tools at our disposal that could help — and the vision of the project is to bring a foundation and strategy that we can all collectively rally around.”
Links for tickets are more prominent on NASCAR’s digital platforms.
The effort, which started around the Coca-Cola 600 at the end of May, aims to increase messaging for ticket sales and broadcasts.
As an example, NASCAR is devoting more of its ad inventory to push ticket sales and less for other initiatives such as NASCAR’s green efforts. Also, this year’s Kids Drive NASCAR campaign has been altered to focus more on getting kids to watch and attend races.
Jung said that 95 percent of the house ads from the sanctioning body — such as in-race national spots — now revolve around attendance or tune-in. In addition, NASCAR has worked with partners like NBC Sports to have play-by-play announcer Rick Allen pitch NASCAR’s ticket website after returning from commercial breaks.
NASCAR is strategically looking at markets that may be soft at the gate. If an upcoming race is at a track that isn’t having attendance issues, the calls to action will be more focused on driving TV tune-in.
NASCAR also is working with tracks, Fox Sports and NBC to better target local media markets instead of relying as much on national advertising. It’s stepping up its paid media efforts on digital and TV in markets that over index with NASCAR fans, including Nashville, Dallas and Greensboro, N.C.
On NASCAR.com, banner ads and top headlines now routinely show links and offers for tickets plus a page that details that weekend’s TV schedule. NASCAR also is working with teams to maximize appearances and media tours and asking drivers to promote tune-in info and ticket information to a greater extent.
Chip Wile, president of Daytona International Speedway, which recently hosted its July NASCAR race weekend, wrote in an email that Daytona “saw the benefits of the collaboration with increased driver opportunities and additional digital marketing support as we headed into our event.”
That race wound up with a 2.7 rating and 4.4 million viewers, off 16 percent in ratings and 18 percent in viewership from last year.
But NASCAR said early results of its initiative are still encouraging, as all three test markets are posting stronger TV viewership numbers than before the project started. Consumer awareness rose 15 percent for Coca-Cola 600 and Coke Zero Sugar 400 promotions in those markets. NASCAR also said that, according to Nielsen, Dallas ratings were down 17 percent year over year before the initiative but have been up 29 percent there since the effort started.
