If something happens three times, a trend can form. In the past few months, three outstanding car racing victories have caused a stir in the sports industry: the Formula 1 Pirelli British Grand Prix 2021, the NASCAR Cup Series event in Road America and the debut of the Camping World SRX series. Interestingly, the same business strategies made these events successful. Together they indicate a significant time window for motorsport.
The most recent success story of this summer was the 2021 British Grand Prix. Despite the ongoing public health battle with COVID-19, the UK government’s event research program kept Silverstone working at full speed. F1 racing fans tired of pandemic restrictions on all sports broke their cabin fever and showed themselves in action. An estimated three-day crowd of 365,000 saw a new sprint race format, a heated rivalry between Hamilton and Verstappen, a major fall on the first lap, and a win from behind. Did I mention a lot of 365,000?
Over 3,200 miles from Silverstone, at Stafford Motor Speedway in Connecticut, the Camping World SRX Series made its debut in June. I am the first to admit that I am skeptical of the concept behind the SRX series. All-star events generally seem made up. While fans appreciate it when the “big guys” gather in a field, it doesn’t necessarily make a great event. The “bizarre” SRX series proved skeptics (including myself) wrong. Excellent viewership, solid prime-time television ratings from CBS, and positive media reviews put this new series debut on a solid footing.
Meanwhile, in the American Midwest, NASCAR returned to the legendary Elkhart Lake Road Course for the first time since 1956. Despite competition with the July 4th Holidays, 100,000 fans greeted the NASCAR Cup Series in Wisconsin. Like other racers first discovering this circuit, the Cup riders marveled at the immensity of Road America and the feeling that the fans seemed to be everywhere on the track.
The three reasons
Three business strategies laid the foundation for the success of these events:
1. Leadership had the confidence to experiment.
It is tempting to live by the saying, “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it”. However, the best organizations know that innovation is the key to growing in a sport, staying relevant with fans and differentiating yourself from the competition. Even if motorsport doesn’t develop any further, everything around it is constantly changing. Fan demographics, the role of technology and the way people consume sport look different today than they did 10 years ago. The sports that are not innovative run the risk of being left behind.
It’s easy to say, because sometimes executives lose their jobs because of failed experiments. Still, this summer we saw examples of how experiments can lead to success. The hypercompetitive F1 field took on a completely new format for them. NASCAR continues to add street courses to its schedule. SRX returned to a more romantic time in the racing past, even if the design was geared towards “entertainment” rather than “pure sport”. All three confidently put their experiments on the track and were rated as victories by their fans.
The combination of experimentation and a sense of entertainment helped turn the first SRX season into a home run. Image by Logan Riely / SRX via Getty Images
2. Novelty brings energy and excitement.
I will be honest After attending hundreds of races, they tend to blur for me. Although attending sporting events is my business, fans feel the same when they see the same product repeatedly. Because of this, a slight change in pace will add excitement to an event. It is not enough for fans to appear on a racetrack or in front of a race broadcast. Event excitement creates the energy of fans to talk about motorsport at work with coworkers, at a bar with friends, or at a family dinner.
All three of these events changed it. There were different formats, different driver combinations or different venues. Whether you are a fan of the Sprint qualifying format or not, no one can deny that the F1 sprint for its British GP caused a lot of buzz. Coupled with the week-long controversy surrounding the accident on the first lap of Hamilton-Verstappen, this event fueled global discussion and interest in Formula 1.
3. At its core, professional sport is still about entertainment
Ray Evernham, co-founder of SRX, told AP’s Jenna Fryer, “It’s motorsport entertainment. Nobody sits here saying this is a super serious series that takes it to the next level. ”What set SRX apart from its summer competition was the stories and drama surrounding its races, including the father-son duel between Bill and Chase Elliott. The series represented a unique and compelling mix of retired and new stars, national and local heroes, and traditional and emerging communication technologies.
An amateur sport becomes professional when its athletes receive a paycheck. That money ultimately comes from fans who are spending hard-earned money expecting entertainment. We can argue what constitutes the definition of “pure sport”. The sport would lose its soul with “artificial competition” and predetermined results. However, when the rules of a sport make for a fun product, the sport thrives with fans and sponsors. The SRX series has reminded us all of what fans missed about car racing.
Why it matters
A sport will reach fans if it stands for something. For many of us, car racing has symbolized how we overcome our fears in order to pursue our dreams. Car races are brave to the core, as are their fans. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, auto racing led the sports world back to action, with NASCAR being the first to go green. The courage shown by racers and their teams inspires fans who are still fighting the end of COVID at this crucial moment for our communities.
Fans reacted to 2020 and 2021 by getting back into the sport in record numbers, as RACER editor Paul Pfanner noted when he realized that we are in the golden age of motorsport after the pandemic. In fact, such strong fan engagement likely motivated NBC to continue its media relationship with INDYCAR and increase the number of races on the NBC network.
Car racing as a source of inspiration has enormous commercial potential. But as Margaret Atwood once said: “Potential has durability”. That potential needs to be tapped now with the strategies we saw this summer, including taking risks, experimenting with new ideas and remembering that the sport has to be both fun and inspiring. I expect this summer’s successes to be repeated in all forms of motorsport. We all like to navigate with roadmaps. Fortunately, this summer’s events have taken a clearer path for the sport.