NASCAR had an entertaining problem on its hands last season: two of its drivers were unhappy with each other, and their frustrations were spilling onto the racetrack.
The feud that bloomed between Chase Elliott and Kevin Harvick was indeed the talk of the sport for weeks. The timing of the spat even meant that more intrigue was injected into NASCAR’s playoffs, driving up interest among fans and media at a crucial time.
In theory, then, the interest of recreational sports bettors should have been piqued as well. An event involving two guys who don’t like each other is the foundation for so much retail and online sports betting that it should have been an easy win for NASCAR, which has eyed wagering as a way to attract new fans to the sport.
And yet, the traditional method of betting NASCAR — picking the winner of a race out of a field of 30-plus drivers — doesn’t intuitively lend itself to a two-person feud. Neither Elliott nor Harvick won a race after their ill feelings arose at Bristol last September, although Elliott did progress further into the playoffs, wishing Harvick "a merry offseason" as he did so.
This is something NASCAR is seeking to remedy this coming season by pushing “featured" matchups. While sportsbooks already offer driver-versus-driver wagering, NASCAR's plan would emphasize a pairing like Elliott and Harvick and involve more familiar betting markets, such as moneyline and point spread-like options that are so popular for football and other sports.
Matt Stallknecht, NASCAR’s senior manager of sports betting, said that far more “niche” sports than stock-car racing saw big jumps in wagering in the U.S. during the earlier days of the COVID-19 pandemic, including Korean baseball and table tennis.
“And the reason they did so well is because those sports are structured in a way, and the betting offerings on those sports are structured in such a way, that are very compelling to the end user,” Stallknecht told the media on Wednesday. “So with things like the matchups and spread, we're finding ways and we're learning a lot about how can we take our existing products and put a betting tradition that’s a little bit more compelling on top of it."
More pie for all
The emphasis on matchups is part of the strategy that the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing has for growing the amount of wagering on the sport. And by growing its handle, NASCAR hopes it will increase interest and, as a result, its total fanbase and viewership, which remain concentrated in the southern United States.
“We want to get folks that are following the sport into that mindset of thinking about not just the race winner,” Stallknecht said.
NASCAR is now entering its 2022 season with four “authorized” gaming operators as partners — Barstool Sportsbook, BetMGM, Fubo Sportsbook, and WynnBET — and those relationships are bearing fruit. Namely, the organization's share of U.S. sports-wagering handle climbed to around 0.25% last year compared to about 0.1% for 2020.
“And as we increase the partnerships, I anticipate that that trend will continue,” said Joseph Solosky, managing director of sports betting at NASCAR. “Instead of trying to take a piece of the pie away from other sports, we want to grow the pie.”
As an example of that overall growth, Solosky pointed to a handle-boosting promotion Barstool Sportsbook ran last year that provided a free bet to players on a Kansas City Chiefs game if they also wagered beforehand on NASCAR’s Kansas race.
Excited to see that our partners @WynnBET are already offering lines on the #NASCAR Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum. Going to be a uniquely compelling race from a betting perspective and glad to see sportsbooks are prepping for the event early. Whose odds do you like early? pic.twitter.com/kUHiQ9HAEN
— Matt Stallknecht (@mstallknecht41) January 25, 2022
Still, the drive for more handle centers around the drama of featured matchups, the vision for which involves bookmakers continuing to offer straight-up options, but also something similar to the point spreads used for various stick-and-ball sports.
Instead of points, though, a NASCAR spread would be based on the number of positions between the drivers at the end of some or all of the race, such as Elliott opening as a 1.5-place favorite in a matchup against Harvick. If Elliott then were to finish fourth in a race and Harvick sixth, Elliott backers would win their bet.
The addition of “same-race” parlays, similar to same-game parlays, is being discussed too, in which a single wager could be made on the outcome of several different bets during an event. In-game or in-race wagering is another avenue of growth being eyed by NASCAR, although that could take more time to catch on.
“For now, we're really taking that crawl-before-you-walk-before-you-run approach and seeing how the featured matchup and head-to-head betting is perceived by the market in the first few months,” Solosky said.
Sharp advice
NASCAR’s approach was developed with the help of conversations the organization had with sharp bettors, some of whom didn’t become interested in wagering on the sport until the pandemic. Armed with those insights, among other things, the association is aiming to structure betting on the sport in a way that can attract new faces.
Those plans will really start being put to the test again on February 6, with the Busch Light Clash that will be held for the first time at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Some sportsbooks already have odds up for the exhibition event, which NASCAR sees as a good sign.
However, the winner of the event is not the only thing on which NASCAR would like to see wagering.
"I think with the matchup content if we can organically introduce that type of thinking in the right places, not only can we increase the handle on the sport, but I think that we can get fans to watch the sport in a different way," Stallknecht said. "And I think that's even more important than anything to sports betting."
