Advertisement

NASCAR may look for marketing help ... from Chase Elliott? PGA Tour led way | KEN WILLIS

Ken Willis, Daytona Beach News-Journal
·4 min read
16

One man’s fan-engagement is another man’s salary supplement.

Or so it may come to pass in NASCAR, where a plan to reward drivers for their civic overtures is apparently being tool-boxed.

Here’s the wording from the Sports Business Journal, which has an ear to the ground on such things:

“NASCAR is in discussions about investing millions of dollars into a new driver incentive program that would start in 2025 and reward the sport’s leading spokespeople for promoting it more.”

And here’s some more:

“The structure for the driver incentive system is still being worked through, but one idea is a rankings-based approach, with credits awarded throughout the season for services performed and then money paid out at the end of the year.”

Hooters has done its best to get its money's worth out of the Chase Elliott relationship. It's worked out for Chase, too.
Hooters has done its best to get its money's worth out of the Chase Elliott relationship. It's worked out for Chase, too.

THRU THE GEARS Keselowski proud of Buescher, RFK amid his own drought; Hamlin "all good" with Larson tap

Services performed? Don’t let the mind wander too far, because there’s still a lot to be hashed out in those corner offices on Speedway Boulevard.

The proposed 2025 beginning coincides with the new media-rights deal (network contracts, etc.).

While several drivers still make similar money to, say, a middlin’ outfielder or an NBA star’s landscaper, others are making much less than drivers (and teams) made earlier in this century.

Back then, sponsors were hanging from low branches everywhere you looked — owners and drivers had to shoo Fortune 500 reps off the front porch in order to get the morning paper (man, talk about the good ol’ days!).

The leaked news includes a potential figure of $20 million annually to incentivize drivers to help promote the product. The pot would be distributed, you imagine, based on the effort and results involved.

"BUBBLE" WALLACE? Playoff picture firms up, but then again, anyone can win Daytona (or Michigan) | NASCAR QNA

My guess is, this would likely evolve into something similar to the PGA Tour’s three-year-old program called PIP — Player Impact Program. A few years ago, when talk started percolating about competition for the game’s best talent, the Tour opened the safe and began rewarding the game’s top stars based on a range of criteria, including internet searches and TV screen time (both easily measurable by today’s data miners).

But also, there’s a largely immeasurable piece allowing for some subjectivity on behalf of the benefactors and beneficiaries alike.

● A player’s general awareness score among a broad U.S. population.

● Social media score that considers a player’s reach, conversation, and engagement metrics.

Those two items are what led to (guess who?) Tiger Woods finishing atop the rankings in each of the first two PIP years, even though he played precious little competitive golf.

Tiger’s earnings last year from PIP was $15 million, from a pot of $100 million spread among the top 20 pippers. Rory McIlroy was next, by the way, at $12 million, and Jordan Spieth next at $9 million.

Say what you want about Tiger’s easy money, but with the possible exception of Arnold Palmer, has anyone brought more global status (and cash) to the game? He might not have “earned” that money in 2021-22, but he sure did through his earlier work.

NASCAR has fewer mouths to feed than a big-league golf tour, so payouts will likely be comfortably lower. Also, you wonder, would NASCAR's leading mouthpiece, Dale Earnhardt Jr., be eligible? He does, after all, race about as often as Tiger plays golf.

Throughout most of NASCAR history, the industry had a good thing going in terms of marketing. Along with its own marketing teams, there are publicity machines at all of the individual tracks, where promoting the product is necessary for their own success.

Enjoy the racing, and "come to the mountains," says Kevin Harvick.
Enjoy the racing, and "come to the mountains," says Kevin Harvick.

And most of all, there’s always been the heavy lifting done by the individual team and driver sponsors through ad campaigns — the cardboard cutout of Chase Elliott at the nearest Hooters, a uniformed Kevin Harvick adorning the giant Busch Light sign at the ABC, etc.

Those things are primarily done to promote wings and beer, but NASCAR gets a free lunch with it. Win-win.

You don’t see quite as many of those displays as we once did. Marketing efforts today are spread thinner, largely because sponsors are spread thinner. This proposed incentive program seems like an attempt to combat that while encouraging ($$) the top racers to get out there more and woo the masses.

The devil is always in the details. And granted, all of my big-time marketing knowledge, if neatly folded, would comfortably fit inside PT Barnum’s watch pocket. But with today’s new world order, this would probably be money well spent.

— Reach Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Chase Elliott to help NASCAR through PGA Tour type incentive system?