THE SPEEDWAY'S PAVED WITH GREEN

BY SHIRLEY BRADY

Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart may not be household names in your home yet ? but give it time.

NASCAR is one of the fastest-growing sports in the country ? its popularity second only to football ? and as NASCAR VP of broadcasting Paul Brooks says, ?Television is the engine that helps drive the sport.?

That also positions it as an advanced services driver for NASCAR's cable TV partners, who every season come up with creative ways to boost the brand and their own messages. Cable marketers have been savvy at leveraging the NASCAR brand even before former NASCAR sponsor (and top cable operator) AT&T Broadband merged its systems with Comcast.

NASCAR's brand loyalty makes it a marketer's dream. In 2002, NASCAR helped its sponsors secure nearly $5 billion in total exposure, and its 75 million fans show their devotion with their wallets. Its market research shows NASCAR-lovers are three times more likely than all other fan groups to buy products from any company that sponsors their favorite drivers or teams. The sport has more corporate sponsors ? 34 ? than any other major sport in the country.

It's also a ratings powerhouse, with more viewers than ever watching the auto races on NBC, TNT, Fox and its cable siblings. NBC and TNT jointly averaged a 13% increase in ratings during their exclusive coverage of the second half of the 2002 season (July through November) over a year earlier. TNT alone posted increases of 21% (to 4.6) in household ratings and 23% (to 2.9 million) for household delivery for the 2002 Winston Cup season on the network.

Such successes convinced Nextel to tie its future to the sport. Starting in January, NASCAR's title sponsor of more than 30 years, the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., is being replaced by the wireless communications company in a ten-year deal estimated to be worth $40 million a year plus an additional $30 million annual media budget. (RJR will remain involved in the sport through a contract extension that runs through 2007.)

Besides switching the name of the Winston Cup to the NASCAR Nextel Cup Series next year, the title sponsorship change reflects the sport's growing popularity among teens and women, along with its growing presence in high-tech platforms such as wireless, interactive, broadband and on-demand.

While the sport appeals to all ages ? its fan base is roughly 50/50 men and women ? its TV viewership is skewing younger. The number of 12- to 17-year-olds watching NASCAR on television has more than doubled since 1999, the largest growth in that age group of any major sport.

It is now the No. 2 televised sport (behind NFL) among 12- to 17-year-olds, and twice as many of them watch NASCAR as watch the NBA. Besides a growing base of female teen viewers, roughly 58% of all kids 7 to 11 are NASCAR fans.

Those trends (from NASCAR, based on research from the 1999-2002 ESPN Sports Poll and Nielsen Media Research) bode well for cable's advanced services.

Racing has expanded beyond its traditional base in the South into more urban areas, bringing events (and marketing opportunities) to more cable markets than ever, including Los Angeles and Chicago. Although eight of the sport's ten-most-avid TV markets are still in the Southeast, growing TV markets for NASCAR ratings last season include Hartford, Conn., Portland, Ore., and Boston.

Farther up the coast, last weekend Time Warner Cable's Maine division tapped into the New England 300, held July 20 at the New Hampshire International Speedway, to promote NASCAR In Car on In Demand. The system gave away free tickets to the event to promote the cutting-edge interactive product for digital cable, which includes a special remote control so fans can access feeds from seven in-car cameras (up from five last season) and real-time data on drivers each week.

As the industry's first enhanced multichannel digital sports package, In Demand is offering a half-season rate of $89 for a 19-race NASCAR In Car package, which it promoted with a free preview on July 5 to demonstrate the product's features during the Pepsi 400 at Daytona International Speedway. ?Feedback for the package has been really good,? says In Demand spokesman Joe Boyle of the response by affiliates to this year's enhanced interactive offering.

NASCAR.com offers Trackpass, a subscription suite of products for broadband users and those fans who must keep up with the sport between races. The service offers exclusive access to a wide variety of live and on-demand features including race coverage of more than 250 Winston Cup and Busch Series events, leaderboard, video highlights and audio clips.

TrackPass retails for $6.95 monthly or $49.95 for the season, or for $9.95/$64.95 with a PitCommand feature, offering real-time GPS-based race telemetry data for Winston Cup events. TrackPass is also available to RealOne SuperPass subscribers, and to Road Runner high-speed Internet users.

The website, and all of NASCAR's interactive rights, are owned and produced by Turner Sports Interactive, which also offers a wireless product. The website has attracted up to 3 billion unique visitors a month since Turner took over and redesigned the site, now one of the most popular sports sites on the Web.

?The usage for all this is extremely high while the churn is very low, and the feedback from fans is tremendous,? says Drew Reifenberger, EVP of program planning, acquisitions and interactive for Turner Sports. With oversight for online and television interactive platforms, he's also looking at developing VOD and HD products around NASCAR.

Three years into the current six-year TV rights deal, the sport has also spurred growth for Turner's cable network TNT along with Fox's cable networks FX, Fox Sports Net and Speed Channel.

FX enjoyed record-breaking ratings for NASCAR last season, and has increased its overall viewership by 21 million homes since the spring of 2001, while sister network Speed Channel ? the exclusive U.S. cable home of NASCAR TV ? is the fastest-growing sports network and the ninth fastest-growing cable network. Now in more than 62 million homes, of which 18 million were added in the last 24 months, Speed Channel telecasts key races, with NASCAR's Craftsman Truck series (previously on ESPN) now anchoring its exclusive and extensive NASCAR coverage, along with other major motor sports such as Formula One racing, with which it has a new three-year deal.

According to Speed Channel president Jim Liberatore, the two-year-old channel is firing on all cylinders thanks to NASCAR, with a boost next month coming in the form of a new one-hour block of enthusiast programming (starting Aug. 4 at 8 p.m.) to attract even more auto and racing buffs to its prime time. ?NASCAR is our most-watched and highest-rated category, and the next category is the auto enthusiasts,? says Liberatore of the move to superserve Speed's audience and boost ratings across the schedule. If viewers respond favorably, the move may also persuade cable operators to melt down Speed Channel to basic cable on any systems where it is now on a premium tier.

Besides being a natural for HDTV, Speed Channel is ramping up its VOD offering beyond its test with Cablevision. ?A lot of our programming is perfect for that environment,? says Liberatore. ?It's evergreen, so whether you're looking at cool cars or how to fix cars, the programming really lends itself very nicely to VOD, and we're planning to offer operators some very intriguing and valuable VOD.?

The sport has also been a boon for TNT, which has attracted a host of new sponsors since airing NASCAR races. Now revving up its second-half coverage, the network is once again offering affiliates a multilayered marketing machine to leverage their NASCAR partnership.

Following what Heather Baldino, VP of marketing and operations for Turner Network Sales, calls ?the massive success? of its 2001 and 2002 campaigns, the TNT Show Car is making 60 pit stops at cable systems through November. The car, along with co-branded stunts such as the ?fastest fan? game, which lets four competing NASCAR fans race remote-controlled cars, visits Comcast's Pittsburgh and Fredricksville, Va., systems this coming weekend.

For the third year running, Turner is also offering its Ready to Race NASCAR local ad sales promotion, which offers two prizes ? six tickets to any one of 15 Winston Cup Series races or a $500 shopping spree ? to participating affiliates.

Turner's other multidimensional affiliate marketing support for NASCAR includes Race for the Championship on TNT, offered to the first 200 systems with 15,000-plus subscribers, and its NASCAR VIP hospitality program, featuring meet and greets with NASCAR drivers and other tie-ins to the sport.

FX also brought back its successful affiliate promotion this season, The Road to Winston Sweepstakes ? which last year reached over 43 million households ? with a lineup of 37 prizes to complement its schedule of three Winston Cup series and 12 Busch Series races.