NASCAR President Steve Phelps knows he has the hottest game in town when it comes to motorsports in the U.S. Sure, IndyCar and Formula One have their share of fans in the 50 states, but nothing comes close to NASCAR.<\/p>\n
Given all that, you\u2019d think that Phelps wouldn\u2019t have to worry about any other racing series. And he doesn\u2019t, not exactly. Rather, Phelps has a broader mindset when it comes to NASCAR\u2019s top competition, and it\u2019s not racing or even other sports like the NFL, MLB or NHL.<\/p>\n
\u201cI actually don\u2019t view them as competitors,\u201d Phelps said recently on CNBC. \u201cOur competitors, I view more holistically. I think it\u2019s really not just motorsports, actually not even just sports. It\u2019s entertainment. And we are competing for that dollar.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are competing for your time and other people\u2019s time, because if they\u2019re not watching NASCAR, are they watching Netflix? Are they watching movies? Are they watching CNBC? What are they doing when they\u2019re not doing that?<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it\u2019s super competitive. I believe if motorsports broadly is rising, we\u2019re the number one motorsports in this country by a wide margin. We\u2019re going to be the beneficiary of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Phelps and other NASCAR officials realize that the sport cannot rest on its laurels or stand still. It wasn\u2019t all that long ago that NASCAR as a sport refused to expand or think outside the box when it came to new markets. This came after a significant expansion in the late 1990s and early 2000s.<\/p>\n
But then the economic crisis hit in 2007 through 2009. Several NASCAR teams were forced to lay off more than 1,000 employees while others folded entirely, and the series suffered greatly.<\/p>\n
Now, NASCAR officials such as Phelps understand we\u2019re in a different time and that the series has to expand, move around or continue to reinvent itself to not only retain current fans but also attract new ones, or re-attract fans who may have left the sport.<\/p>\n
Despite F1 and IndyCar popularity increases, NASCAR is still No. 1 by far<\/p>\n
Phelps sees how F1 and IndyCar have both grown in recent years, even though they\u2019re still a far cry from challenging NASCAR for the No. 1 motorsport in the country.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s also why NASCAR in the last few years has added different locations such as the Chicago Street Race, Mexico City, and now rumor has it that San Diego may host a street race as early as next year<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you look globally at motorsports, and then domestically at global sports, in 2018 motorsports was struggling,\u201d Phelps said. \u201cWe were struggling, IndyCar, F1, but there\u2019s been a resurgence since 2019 and we\u2019ve all experienced growth, which is helpful, obviously. <\/p>\n \u201cF1 is doing really well here in this country and around the world. We\u2019re doing well in this country. IndyCar is coming back, NHRA, IMSA.\u201d<\/p>\n NASCAR is on the verge of even greater growth, Phelps predicts, not just domestically, but also globally. \u201cI think there\u2019s both domestic growth that we will experience over the next 20 years, and it\u2019s incredibly fertile ground for us to grow internationally,\u201d he said<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI say that because of the style of racing we have. We are close side-by-side racing, kind of what we would call beating and banging, if you will, and trading paint. That\u2019s a style of racing that people like. It\u2019s loud, it\u2019s a sensory experience, like sensory overload when you go to a race.<\/p>\n \u201cFor us, getting people to a race is critical, because if you go to a race, typically you\u2019ll become a fan, or at least you have an appreciation for what it is. And so we just want people to consider us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASCAR President Steve Phelps knows he has the hottest game in town when it comes to motorsports in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":72149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[1406,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-72148","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-nascar","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114873273141660058","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}