Xfinity Establishing Goals Of What It Wants Out Of First Year Titling NASCAR’s No. 2 Series

With fewer than 80 days left before the start of the inaugural NASCAR Xfinity Series season, Comcast Senior Dir of Sports Brand Marketing Matt Lederer said his team is already baselining its goals for the sponsorship, and that Year 1 will be focused on building the brand. Lederer, speaking yesterday at the '14 NASCAR Motorsports Marketing Forum, said, "We were very methodical about our strategy. For Year 1, it's all about brand metrics: Are (NASCAR fans) increasing their consideration of us? What is their impression of us? Has it improved through sponsorships? We've begun to baseline that data. We do a combination of internal and outsourcing to follow our brand metrics. Impressions, likelihood to recommend … those are the things we're going to measure."

Lederer, who noted that talks between NASCAR and Comcast began about a year ago, talked about why the company chose to deploy its Xfinity cable-division brand for the sponsorship of NASCAR's secondary series: "NASCAR is the perfect intersection of technology and entertainment. You won't see us saying things like, 'The official video provider of NASCAR.’ What we are is the official entertainment provider of NASCAR. X1 is the official entertainment operating system of NASCAR. It's a nuance, but it's a unique and important one for us." He added, "I wouldn't say it's an awareness play. We're going to use the platform that NASCAR provides to drive even further consideration of our services. Candidly, in our markets, awareness is not an issue." He said that the brand's sports app will "be a big part of our NASCAR experience," and touted its cloud-based system as the means to making the sport a more digitally immersed one. Adam Stern/SportsBusinessDaily.com