7 minute read
Events
from SBC Leaders Issue 20
by SBC Global
JOSEPH SOLOSKY: RACING AHEAD WITH FAN ENGAGEMENT
JULY’S SBC SUMMIT NORTH AMERICA conference and tradeshow in New Jersey will focus on the converging worlds of sports betting, igaming, professional sports, entertainment, and broadcast media. Ahead of the event, SBC Leaders caught up with Joseph Solosky, Managing Director of Sports Betting at NASCAR, to find out what that convergence means for the sport
BY MARTYN ELLIOTT
In the days before PASPA was struck down, there was a sizeable grey market for NFL and NBA betting in the US, but offshore operators and barroom bookies saw little action on NASCAR races.
So it was perhaps surprising that NASCAR was one of the first professional sports to recognise the full potential of legal sports betting as a fan engagement tool, particularly as it had been relatively slow to embrace the daily fantasy sports boom.
Four years on from that momentous US Supreme Court decision and NASCAR is a sport that looks very comfortable with the idea of betting. It can count BetMGM, WynnBET, Penn National Gaming, The Action Network, Sportradar and Genius Sports among its partners, and is involved in the AGA’s Have A Game Plan responsible betting initiative. It has even helped to facilitate market access for operators via its speedways in Virginia and Arizona.
In fact, it is so at home with betting
that its rules allow not only teams to sign gambling sponsorship deals, but also for individual drivers to become brand ambassadors for sportsbooks providing they do not promote wagers on NASCAR races.
But how has all the hard work to get to this point translated into the end goal of improved fan engagement and attracting new viewers to a sport that is attempting to expand its audience beyond its traditional stronghold in the Southern states? Solosky is cautiously optimistic that the efforts of his team have yielded results.
He explained: “I know that fan engagement is a buzzword from the leagues, however, it truly is the number one goal of NASCAR in this space. NASCAR hasn’t put strong pressure on me from a P&L standpoint, in terms of ‘we must make this much money off of sports betting’. It's very much ‘how do we grow the sport using sports betting?’
“Our bottom line in terms of fan engagement is all about ticket sales, TV viewership, and attendance at our tracks. All of those are up, but we don't yet have a correlation method to say these are up because sports betting has been legalised and because we've leaned in so heavily to it.”
Solosky has also observed signs in wagering data that NASCAR is now on the radar of bettors in a way that was never the case in the prelegalisation era.
“We started from almost zero in terms of (share of) handle, but we've seen handle grow from 0.1% in 2020 to 0.25% in 2021. This year, we don't have a stated goal as to what that percentage of handle will be. However, in the first two Cup races this year alone, we've outpaced all of February and March last year combined. So that handle number is going to go up,” he said.
“We do believe it is a direct corollary to fan engagement. Football fans and baseball fans are getting more involved in NASCAR. They're betting on it more, which means they're watching it more, and hopefully they're going to go to races because they've been watching it and seeing how exciting it is.”
Pleasingly for Solosky, the engagement has not just come in the traditional NASCAR heartlands in the south. As the sport continues its push into new states by expanding its race calendar, bookmakers have identified healthy engagement levels further north.
“From reports that we've seen from our betting operator partners, we've seen strong interest in betting on NASCAR in states like Pennsylvania, Indiana, and also New York since it legalised in January.”
Part of this growth has been generated by product development and the creation of markets that new viewers find more engaging.
“Match-up betting is what we have tried to push to bookmakers for how to feature NASCAR betting, as opposed to just who will win the race,” said Solosky. “What we're trying to do now is condition our fans, because we think the match-ups are a better experience than betting on who will win the race outright.
“It allows for shorter odds, so you're not sticking your money on longshots where you might tune out from a broadcast if your driver crashes or has a car malfunction. If your first bet was on a 20-1 longshot and they didn't even finish the race, you probably wouldn't bet on the sport again. So the head-to-head match-ups really allow
fans to watch the race differently from a driver-versus-driver perspective and keep you engaged with the action longer.”
Part of that education process is a partnership with the Better Collective-owned sports publisher The Action Network, which has a NASCAR bet centre displaying the odds on forthcoming races from multiple sportsbooks and a host of content designed to inform bettors.
“There’s content for each and every race that's coming up. I think they do between four and ten articles a week on the race, so they'll cover everything from how weather will impact the race to what their model is predicting for how to bet on certain drivers. And they talk about match-ups as well,” said Solosky.
“They also allow users to track bets for NASCAR. not only for yourself to keep track of how you're doing in terms of your NASCAR betting, but you can also see how the experts are doing. So those who are writing these articles and telling you to make these picks, it's publicly out there how they did last week and how are they performing overall.”
The Action Network is not the only partner that has been proactive in driving interest in NASCAR betting and, by extension, the sport as a whole. Solosky has also been impressed by the activations the official sportsbook partners have used to reach the audience.
He explained: “I'll give three examples from our three current live partners. BetMGM has an actual betslip integration on Nascar.com. If you visit the site from a legal betting state the Thursday, Friday, Saturday before a race, you would see a betslip with all the available options. If you're interested, it would redirect you to the BetMGM homepage to register and place a bet, so that's a great way for BetMGM to acquire NASCAR fans as customers.
“With WynnBet, they activate at four Virginia races per year. So at Richmond and Martinsville, which each have two races, they have an activation hauler or truck right outside the venue where they encourage users to sign up for their app.
“Similarly, Barstool Sportsbook has an activation area at the track in Arizona, where they can sign up users. There are also signage opportunities, PA reads, and they have suites where VIP players can go and watch the race from.”
While things are going well for NASCAR’s sports betting supremo, he acknowledges that there is still plenty to learn. Some of that education will come from seeing how other sports work with the legal betting industry.
He has been particularly impressed by the PGA Tour’s solution to the issue of how to keep bettors watching the action when it can take four days to get a result. Or perhaps just two to discover a losing outcome of a bet on outright tournament victor.
“The PGA has done a great job in pivoting towards those head-to-head match-ups where you can focus on player-versus-player round-versusround, and have a more immediate result,” he said. “NASCAR, on a smaller scale, had the same issue with betting on a race outcome and having to wait three hours for the race to end.”
Solosky also liked the NBA’s trial of a second screen betcast on ESPN and is thinking about how NASCAR might create its own alternate screen experience for those fans interested in autosport betting. This is perhaps something more sports will experiment with because, as Solosky pointed out, while 20% of any sport’s fans may place a bet, it’s important not to risk alienating the other 80%.
“I think there's a fine line of how much advertising and focus on betting you want to do as a league and as a broadcaster,” he concluded. •
SBC Summit North America 2022 takes place at Meadowlands Exposition Center in New Jersey on 12-14 July. Full details of the agenda and exhibitors are available at SBCEvents.com
