Sports Betting Conversations: Sports Betting in Auto Racing
Can sports betting reengage existing motor fans and enhance their experience? The DataArt team met with Joseph Solosky, Managing Director at NASCAR, to discuss the potential of betting in motorsports. Joseph talks about in-race and head-to-head betting as means of attracting new audiences and speaks of technological innovations like the Next Gen car.
SPEAKERS
Russell Karp, Vice President in the DataArt Media and Entertainment practice, focusing on sports betting.
Joseph Solosky, Managing Director at NASCAR. The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) is the sanctioning and operating company for the №1 form of motorsports in the United States and the owner of 16 of the nation’s major motorsports entertainment facilities. Based in Daytona Beach, Florida, NASCAR sanctions more than 1,200 races in more than 30 US states, Canada, Mexico, and Europe.
Kevin Twitchell, advisor in the DataArt Media and Entertainment practice.
Matthew Shatz, advisor in the DataArt Media and Entertainment practice.
Watch the full video or read a shortened text version below.
Russell Karp: How’s the transition been going from a data provider to a company like NASCAR, who’s a consumer of that data?
Joseph Solosky: It’s been pretty seamless. I’ve likened it to how I was with Sportradar internationally before I joined Sportradar on the US side. So, I worked internationally for Sportradar for two and a half years and got a lot of industry experience in different continents of more mature markets. When sports betting became legalized in the US, I had an opportunity to have overseas experience knowing where the market was heading. So, in talking to operators who also were coming from overseas, we were on the same wavelength of where the industry was heading but also understood that there needed to be some level setting of it being a new industry in a brand-new industry in the US. And also, the perspective we were coming from in terms of the consumer being more daily fantasy focused where prop betting might be more prevalent than overseas, or in-play betting would probably happen a little bit more quickly than it did overseas.
But in my transition to NASCAR from Sportradar, after spending two and a half years working with operators on the data side, I had a lot of great experience not only for my international time but my domestic time in terms of the contacts that I worked with on the operator side. NASCAR works with — we’ll get into it a little bit later, but we have three authorized gaming operator partners, and we talked to many different other operators who see NASCAR as an emerging sport in terms of sports betting. So, from a contact and relationship perspective, it’s been really helpful. Then, from the data side of things, understanding what’s important when you’re selling data and official data to operators, going to a league, and working with that data and understanding how that’s distributed to the supplier; and then, how that supplier distributes it to the operators having some industry experience of knowing what markets work, how the data feed is collected and managed by the league, and then sent to the supplier, which is then sent to operators. There’s a lot of communication from me to the supplier, to the operator in terms of whether its metrics or data points are important or different from the NASCAR feed that allows us to create more engaging markets or different markets, especially within race being offered this year to grow the sport from just a traditional pre-race market prior to 2021 to be more focused on an in-race market, focused sport or at least having that feature as part of our offering in the US and overseas.
Matthew Shatz: How does NASCAR as a league thinks about this overall betting opportunity? It’s a big revenue opportunity where they want to be involved in the operations, but are they happy with licensing the name and just collecting some money? Is it a brand-building exercise more with the audience? Where does the league see the opportunity?
Joseph Solosky: There’s certainly a revenue component in it; it’s not number one when we think about it internally at NASCAR. The big growth opportunity for sports betting at NASCAR is fan engagement, and I’ve said it a million times: I’ve been here for three months, but it is fan engagement.
We see sports betting as a medium to further engage our already existing loyal, strong fan base at NASCAR who may never have bet on a race before to provide a compelling product, to increase their engagement and their experience at a race by providing a fun, legalized sports betting market to enhance their either viewership or their attendance at a race.
Joseph Solosky
Managing Director at NASCAR
But it’s also probably the bigger part of the pie are the traditional stick and ball fans of other sports, who may not have either watched or attended a NASCAR race before; but because they are betting on those sports, having NASCAR as an attractive offering may get them to bet on the sport which will then maybe get them to watch the sport, which will then get them to attend a sport and then become a fan. And then those network effects branch out, and we see it in ticket sales and merchandise opportunities, in viewership across our broadcast partners. So, it’s a spider web effect. The revenue opportunity is there, but as we all know, it’s a very slim margin business, and the leagues get a part of that pie, but the bigger part of the pie is the overall growth of the sport and using sports betting as a tool to increase our fans and viewership, or the sport of NASCAR.
Kevin Twitchell: If you look at prop betting, for example, would you use it as a strategy to get a younger base?
We’re looking at all the different micro-markets, prop betting suppliers in the marketplace, and others and seeing what they can do with the sport of NASCAR. There are a few out there who see NASCAR as the next step of prop betting, and there’re some interesting markets out there that go along with the driver focus, the individual-focused aspect of the sport.
Joseph Solosky
Managing Director at NASCAR
So, if you look at a popular betting market for NASCAR, it’s the head-to-head market where you’re betting one driver against another; and it’s a very long season, it’s eight months, and a lot happens from race to race, and from week to week. There might be a driver conflict from the week before or some other events where it’s attractive to bet against these two drivers head-to-head. That prop betting side of things is a way that we can engage and create a compelling product on the prop betting side where we utilize the storyline of the NASCAR season and what’s going on from driver personalities, head-to-head conflicts, or just other aspects of the season that go along, and then utilizing that as a market that we can push and that our supplier can create as a sport.
But when it comes to the props, we’re looking down the line of the next fastest lap, who will win the next lap — those are things that are attractive to us and where we look 2022 and beyond of having those specific prop markets, that I would like to see.
Kevin Twitchell: As far as you are looking ahead to integrating into the actual programming and having experts on and talking about the pre-race to extend the viewership and second-screen opportunities, how is sports betting working with your media partners?
Joseph Solosky: Our broadcast partners with Fox and MVC, and they have their own betting partnerships: NBC with PointsBet and Fox with Fox Bet. So, there’re lots of integrations they do on their own, whether it’s free-to-play games or integrations with on-screen odds as they update with PointsBet and NBC when that kicks off in the second half of the season, but we certainly see ways to educate the fan from a media perspective. There are a lot of passionate NASCAR fans who are in media, whether they’re talking about the sport on the broadcast or they have a big social following. So, we look at utilizing that not only as a way to be a voice for the sport from a betting perspective, but also a big part of it for me is educating the fan on what NASCAR betting is, how it may be different from the traditional stick and ball sports, and then also what are the unique opportunities of betting on NASCAR versus other sports as well in terms of the different markets that are offered and how it may look different from the stick and ball sports.
But I see the media and the broadcast perspective as a great podium for education. I like having these opportunities to speak on behalf of NASCAR and our sports betting initiatives, but there are a lot of people out there who have Twitter followings and social media followings, tens and thousands and millions more than I do. So, to have them out there and speaking on behalf of our sport, working in conjunction with us, and getting the message out is a huge opportunity for us. And then, as I said in the beginning, I know it’s a concern on the broadcast side no matter what sport or what league you’re talking about — is the oversaturation.
So, there’s a good example this year: what NBA and ESPN have done with having a second screen opt-in for sports betting with the BetCast for NBA games. So, instead of just oversaturating your fans and saying that «Here’s the updated prop for Trey on hitting a three is the next score,» — that can be on another feed, so you’re not alienating a fan base who may not be interested in betting. At NASCAR, we look at it the same way: we don’t want every lap to be focused around a new offering or what the odds update might be. There’s an opportunity and a right place for that on a second or third screen option in the sport.
Russell Karp: Do you take a different approach in states that have already legalized sports betting in terms of the races being held there versus states that are still waiting for legislation to be approved?
Joseph Solosky: Absolutely. 2021 has been a big year for us in terms of market access and a big year for leagues and teams overall from a market access perspective. NASCAR had the opportunity to work with WynnBET in the state of Virginia, where their license allowed them to have an in-track betting experience at Martinsville and Richmond Raceway, which are NASCAR-owned tracks. So, there were activation areas, suites, and different signage opportunities for WynnBET to capitalize on, and we’ll see that as well in Arizona.
Arizona is a very unique state in the way that teams and leagues have been awarded licenses in the state to partner with a sports betting operator so that the Phoenix Suns Stadium will be a potentially 24/7 365 sportsbook for FanDuel, and Phoenix Raceway, which is also owned by NASCAR, will have that opportunity to be a 24/7 365 sportsbook operated by a partner of NASCAR. So, as we hope and wait for other states to legislate maybe in that manner, there’ll be different opportunities for that across tracks; and in states where it’s not legalized, somewhere like Ohio where a huge NASCAR fan base is, there’re opportunities to educate the consumer on betting, which other leagues are doing whether it’s Daily Fantasy or free-to-play games. Things like that are a logical next step to sports betting.
Russell Karp: So, if a racing team has a partnership, are there any conflicts there? Or are these teams allowed to run independently with whatever partnerships they want to pursue?
Joseph Solosky: It’s almost the opposite. It increases the broader opportunity of NASCAR and the racing teams to work together, to push across, whether it’s promotions or sweepstakes across a whole season of integrating the partnership that a driving or a racing team might have of individual money can’t buy experiences with that driver whether it’s a dinner or a VIP meet-and-greet at a race, or surrounding a race, or culminating in our playoffs in November.
NASCAR has a ton of assets that we work with from the authorized gaming operator side, whether it’s at the track or digitally, that we can combine with the racing teams. And it’s allowed us to work more closely in conjunction with the racing teams across those two different while they’re two balls, they’re separate deals, and they don’t bleed over to one another the way the ownership structure works and the racing team and NASCAR as the sanctioning body that relationship works. There’s been a lot of opportunities for me, especially being relatively new to the league, of being able to work with the teams that are either thinking about or already have done sponsorship deals with sports betting operators of realizing, «Hey, if they’re also an authorized gaming operator of NASCAR» this increases the value of the sponsorship in terms of what it can offer the consumer.
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By Russell Karp,
Vice President of Media and Entertainment Practice at DataArt
Originally published at https://www.dataart.com.
