A rain delay during the 56th running of the Daytona 500 on Sunday – not to mention a second win in the Great American Race by NASCAR’s 16-time Most Popular Driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. – had fans flocking to NASCAR’s second screen products in huge numbers for updates and exclusive content. The heavy traffic resulted in record numbers for NASCAR Digital Media’s platforms since the sanctioning body regained control of its digital rights in 2013.
The combined year-over-year (YOY) increases in traffic on NASCAR.com, NASCAR Mobile, NASCAR RACEVIEW MOBILE and NASCAR’s mobile website during the Daytona 500 are as follows:
· +39% in unique visitors
· +61% total visits to the platform
· +25% video views
· +131% page views
“One of the most important things we learned in year one of the new platform was that more and more people are turning to mobile devices and second screen products to consume NASCAR content,” said Colin Smith, managing director, NASCAR Digital Media. “Yesterday’s traffic is indicative of Earnhardt’s popularity as well as a testament to the enhancements we continue to make, both on mobile and NASCAR.com.”
In addition, more fans logged onto NASCAR’s digital properties throughout the race weekend, starting with Thursday’s Budweiser Duel and ending with Sunday’s Daytona 500. The combined increases in traffic to NASCAR.com, NASCAR Mobile, NASCAR RACEVIEW MOBILE and NASCAR’s mobile site from Thursday through Sunday this season compared to the same timeframe last season are as follows:
· +10% in unique visitors
· +18% in total visits
· +44% in video views
· +72% in page views
Finally, unexpected downtime during the 2014 Daytona 500 encouraged more fans to check NASCAR Mobile for on-track updates. The YOY increase in usage is as follows:
· +51% unique visitors
· +96% total visits
Additional NASCAR Digital Media highlights are as follows:
· NASCAR Digital Media’s platforms served up a total of 37 million page views from Thurs., Feb. 20 through Sunday, Feb. 23, 2014, which is a 72% increase over 2013.
· The NASCAR Mobile and NASCAR RACEVIEW MOBILE apps have now recorded 2.9 million total downloads since their launch in 2013.
· Both apps combined received 235,000 new downloads the week of the 2014 Daytona 500.
· Fantasy entries are currently up +25% YOY against 2013.
NASCAR also saw success on the social media front during the 2014 Speedweeks. See below:
· Sunday, Feb. 23, 2014 marked the highest overall single-day social volume since NASCAR launched its Fan & Media Engagement Center (FMEC), up 67% YOY during race.
· The 2014 Daytona 500 generated more than 86,000 social posts for the 15 minutes around the checkered flag, which was the highest peak volume seen so far by FMEC – and up 76% YOY during the same period of last year’s Daytona 500.
· According to Nielsen SocialGuide, a total of 6.55 million people saw 623,000 tweets about the 2014 Daytona 500. On average, each person in the Twitter TV audience saw 10.65 tweets about the race, which is the highest per person average for any sporting event on the same day. The 2014 Daytona 500 was the No. 2 daytime sports event for the month of February ranked by Twitter TV audience and had more tweets than any episode of the 2014 Winter Olympics except the opening ceremony.
Tune in to the next NASCAR Sprint Cup Series season race at Phoenix International Raceway on Sunday, March 2 at 3 p.m. ET on FOX, Motor Racing Network, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio™ and NASCAR RACEVIEW MOBILE on your mobile devices. Visit NASCAR.com for additional race day coverage.
NASCAR PR
