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NASCAR MEDIA CONFERENCE

January 24, 2018

Steve Phelps

THE MODERATOR: Steve, do you want to say anything off the top or jump right into questions?
STEVE PHELPS: No, I'll say something right off the top. For starters, I apologize, I'm on a plane, so I'll be really rude to the people around me and talk to you, so if you hear a very loud person coming on, then it won't be me, it'll be a flight attendant.
I'd say overall, guys, which I think is really important, I think the most important thing from our perspective is talking about the racing, so we truly have the best racing on the planet, and I would say the 2017 season was arguably the best season we've ever had. At the core of that or obviously the story lines, but those have come out of the drivers, the crews and the teams that really make this sport go, the drivers being the central figures here, obviously.
15 different race winners last year, the Cinderella story with the 78 team and Martin and Cole, and the team from Denver, just amazing stuff. I thought the playoffs were fantastic. The stage racing clearly worked. Fan support was off the charts. Really happy as we head into this season.
So I think if you look at it, starting with competition, the next piece is about star power, and our drivers are the central part of star power. If you look at our marketing, our marketing has traditionally been kind of a combination of deference of the young drivers, probably a little more emphasis on the veteran drivers just because we haven't had a group or crop of young drivers previously that we've had in the last couple years. So if you look at our marketing and our advertising, it is a mix of veteran drivers and these young drivers.
You know, the list of veteran drivers is Kyle, it's Jimmie, it's Brad, it's Joey, Denny, all the guys who are‑‑ many of them who are future Hall of Famers, but that is an important element for us. And then we also are telling the stories of these young drivers, so Chase and Ryan and Kyle Larson and Danny Suárez and Bubba Wallace and this whole group of young drivers who are capturing the imagination of our fans, as well.
At the end of the day, it's really good the story lines that are coming out of this, and for our fans, our research will tell you the majority of it is about winning, so what kind of success are they going to have on the racetrack. Making sure we are giving these young drivers a platform to do that is an important part of our marketing. So that would be the preamble.
And the last piece I would say is if you look at the overall health of the sport, the metrics of it, television, digital and social as a whole, we've got some very strong metrics from this past year that will go on and still have the number of Fortune 500 companies that continues to climb in our sport. Never have had more participation than we have today. And all of it has to do with the quality of our race fans and the passion of our race fans. That would be my preamble. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Q. I heard some of your comments on Sirius, so please correct me if I'm wrong. Are you saying that there is some legitimacy to Kyle's comments in that I guess it's not so much what you're doing now but what you weren't doing before?
STEVE PHELPS: I think it's a fair statement, and when Dave asked that question or Kyle made that comment, you know, and I think it was a miss on our part. Until four or five years ago, most of our marketing was about the racing itself and pretty pictures around the racing. It wasn't about the stars of our sport. And so do I think that's fair that when he came into the sport and started winning right off the bat? Yeah, I think it's a fair statement that we did not give that kind of support. Frankly it was really ‑‑ the impetus to this was around we had an unknown‑‑ a relatively unknown racer win the 2011 Daytona 500 in Trevor Bayne, and that was a bit of a wake‑up call. With the media's help frankly, that week leading up to it, and Jeff Gordon and the fact that they were a good tandem, that helped us, but we never wanted to put ourselves in that position again. So that's why we have our D4D class. That's why we have our NASCAR Next program. That's why we make sure that we're promoting at the K&N East and West series and then trucks and XFINITY where names are made, so when they finally get up to the Monster Energy series, they are known quantities. They're winners.
As you look at William Byron or Christopher Bell as they migrate into the NASCAR Cup Series, our fans know who they are, which is exactly what we want.

Q. Prior to Kyle's comments, have you had any response or criticism from the veteran drivers, whether it be trucks, XFINITY or Cup about them not receiving promotions?
STEVE PHELPS: You know, I think that's a good question. Kyle and I had a discussion about this late last year, and I think it's‑‑ we know what we're trying to do from a marketing perspective, and we believe that we are promoting those drivers in a balanced way, and there are things that some veteran drivers are not interested in doing, and we understand that. To Ryan's comments, if you want to‑‑ they're willing to do some things that some other folks aren't, that's fine. It's all a mix. We've got these fantastic drivers in all these national series who have the opportunity to connect with a fan, and that's what we want them to do. And so Kyle does a lot for our sport. I think we expose Kyle in a good, meaningful way as to‑‑ Toyota does, as well, M&M's does, working with the Gibbs guys, and that's important for us.
So it's not about veterans complaining about they're not getting their fair share or‑‑ it's an education process and collaborating together, and Kyle is on the driver council, and if this is a topic that they're interested in bringing up there or just in person, we're happy to listen to what he has to say.

Q. Martin Truex said despite winning the championship and that phenomenal year he had last year, he really hasn't seen the needle move as far as his popularity goes. How does NASCAR not fall into the trap they did with Jimmie Johnson where he is not the Tom Brady of our sport, at least from a public standpoint, and help build the Martin Truexes and other 30 plus something drivers that are really out there and putting your product, the best product out on the racetrack?
STEVE PHELPS: Listen, I think that that's a difficult one to pinpoint because I heard you say‑‑ obviously I know Jimmie well and have spent some time with him outside the racetrack, as well. He's a great guy. Hard to find a better guy for sure. And why he hasn't resonated more, it's a very difficult question which I'm not sure of. I do think that‑‑ sadly it's going to be one of those situations when Jimmie retires, whether he has seven, eight, nine, whatever number of championships he has and however many race wins that he has, that we'll look back at Jimmie Johnson (indiscernible). It's hard to answer the question for Martin. I think actually Martin will see the needle move on his popularity (indiscernible), but again, he's a great ambassador for the sport, as is Jimmie Johnson, and he resonates with a fan base, and we want that to expand and to look at more. Again, it's hard to pinpoint one thing or another that is causing a particular driver to not resonate to a level that we think he or she should.

Q. You had said earlier about NASCAR kind of dropped the ball in promoting their drivers. When did that realization come, and why the shift now to do this? What was that happenstance to do this to where you're in this situation?
STEVE PHELPS: Yeah, so everything that we've started in I would say 2010, 2011, we really looked at things that were‑‑ that we believed were headwinds for the sport, and one of them was the ability of our drivers resonating. So we started in 2011, 2012, and then it's ramped up to where it is today, which I think is the best we've ever done promoting our drivers specifically. So it was really rooted in research about, hey, maybe these guys aren't really resonating like we'd like them to, so we'd better‑‑ who better to do that than us because we have the platform to do that. We've got the institutional media that we do as partnership with our television partners. In '13 we took back our digital and social channels, so it really allowed us to create a much stronger marketing voice with our drivers at the center of it.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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