Nascar Amazon Prime Video Deal welcomed by sponsors

Like no other sport, Nascar is driven by sponsoring. And although the new television law business, which for the first time contains a streaming platform like Amazon Prime Video, can lead to concern for fans, the sponsors who pay the bills are all for it.

Nascar celebrates his first video debut on Sunday evening with running one of the crown jewel events in the series, the Coca Cola-600 in Charlotte. It also marks the return of Dale Earnhardt Jr. to the Broadcast stand after he was traveling last season and worked with NBC for several years. Earnhardt will announce the intermediate season packages for both Amazon and TNT.

While the racing series is not close to its popularity summit in the mid -2000s, it still pulls consistently high numbers. Even prominent teams and star drivers have struggled with sponsorships with everyone in the modern economy in the past few years.

Since Nascar has taken a step forward to say goodbye to a streaming contract with Amazon, it offers sponsors who consider it a positive step for sport to reach consumers where they are. In an article at The athlete The Nascar team managers say that the move to Amazon was enormous for the increase in sponsoring deals, as well as the first race of Nascar in Mexico later this year and the expansion to new markets.

“The marketing page is currently very bullish,” said team owner Rick Ware, whose team signed a 12-race deal with Arby's contract at the beginning of this year. “We are obviously one of the smaller teams and we have more discussions than in the past. That does not mean that they close them all, but the interest is there.”

Almost every team owner or manager who spoke to Athletic for this story was similar. Many said that this was the most optimistic that they felt about sponsorship in some time, and based on two main factors, pointed to increased interested parties: a new media law contract that in particular picked up five races -the first time that Nascar has been taking streaming service to the races of the Cup races since the 1950s.

“The marketers know that this is the way the audience goes,” said Steve Lauleta, President of the 23xi racing team. “So this is not a one -year light switch, it will be more of a dimmer to continue to grow and follow the audience while it grows.”

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“Sponsors are very fascinated by Amazon,” said Mike Belander, President of Richard Childress Racing. “Now we have no result, so let's see what the result looks like. But they see what they did with the NFL. It has only grown. We expect the same.

“It was a massive change.

The sponsoring game has recently changed dramatically in Nascar. It was once that teams are synonymous for a sponsor and a painting scheme (think of Dale Earnhardt Sr. in his black Goodwrench Chevrolet or Jeff Gordon with his Rainbow Dupont scheme). Now the teams share the primary sponsors throughout the season. Even the Nascar Cup series itself is now shared sponsors with three “Premier Partners” in Coca-Cola, Busch Light and XFinity Sharing tasks that once had companies like Winston and Nextel.

Nascar is far from the first sport that streaming takes on. And the percentage of the timetable for Amazon Prime Video is relatively low compared to the entire racing calendar. But both within and outside of sport, it could be one of the most decisive relationships between a sports league and a streamer that we have seen. If the fans are able to stay committed and find races while it also brings new money to sport, it could be a big Homerun for the top racing series in America.