NASCAR Drafts off Hoops, Soccer Leagues With In-Season Challenge
NASCAR Cup Series begins its inaugural In-Season Challenge on Saturday, in which 32 drivers will compete in a head-to-head knockout bracket during five otherwise standard Cup Series events. Of the two teams that remain by the fifth race, the winning team will take home $1 million.
The motorsports league is the latest sport to spice up the middle of its calendar with a tournament. While season-long competitions running in tandem with regular-season play have long been part of the global soccer calendar, the WNBA and the NBA have both played a major role in popularizing them stateside. Days after the first race of NASCAR's In-Season Challenge, the WNBA will crown its fifth Commissioner's Cup champion when the Indiana Fever and Minnesota Lynx face off next Tuesday for $500,000 in prize money.
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The tournaments serve several purposes beyond offering an additional bit of hardware for competitors to claim. To start, they're valuable as leagues add new media partners to the mix, creating more events to sell. Amazon will take over NBA Cup broadcasting responsibilities this year, working with the league to make the most out of the distinct inventory. Prime Video aired the seeding races for NASCAR's Challenge, with TNT Sports now airing the five knockout rounds. Unlike the basketball versions, NASCAR's competition will take place entirely within the existing race schedule.
TNT has also built an alternate broadcast on TruTV that will focus on the head-to-head battles, with an eye toward engaging sports bettors. The show is sponsored by DraftKings.
New stakes also help differentiate the events in a crowded media marketplace. NASCAR runs 36 Cup Series races a year, with the middle portion lacking the renown of the season kickoff Daytona 500 or the fall's playoffs.
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'We wanted to make sure that there was enough heft from a scheduling perspective, as well as additional storylines during this portion of the season, to deliver to TNT,' NASCAR chief media and revenue officer Brian Herbst said. 'This concept of this in-season tournament hits both marks. It elevates this portion of the season for TNT, and it also drives storylines in the sport on a week-to-week basis.'
As the NBA has already shown, a new trophy can also elevate new stars. In the NBA Cup's first two seasons, the Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder each made a run to the final game, watched by 4.6 and 3.0 million, respectively, before facing off in this year's NBA Finals. If NASCAR is lucky, a few new rivalries might emerge over the next month as well.
'To have a performance, you have to have a stage,' Steve Letarte, who will be calling the races for TNT, said. 'You have to have a spotlight. So I think this tournament creates a stage, the broadcast will create the spotlight, and now if a driver can rise above, then I do believe they have a chance to become a star.'
NASCAR won't be the last to join the party. College basketball and football have continued pumping out new early-season showdowns for media partners and potential sponsors, and even more new events are expected in a post-House world.
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The challenge when launching the events is to get competitors—and thus fans—to buy into the new significance. Letarte expects teams to pay more attention to their In-Season Challenge competitors as the five-race tournament plays out, and the potential $1 million draws closer. But, he added, it doesn't take much to get these racers' juices flowing.
'What makes NASCAR so great is just the competitive drive in the garage area,' Letarte said. 'Everybody wants to be the best at everything, whether it's a race on the track or a race to the airport.'
NASCAR's In-Season Challenge bracket is available on the NASCAR website, and the knockout will take place across the following races:
Challenge Round 1: EchoPark Speedway (June 28 at 7 p.m. ET)
Challenge Round 2: Chicago Street Race (July 6 at 2 p.m. ET)
Challenge Round 3: Sonoma Raceway (July 13 at 3:30 p.m. ET)
Challenge Round 4: Dover Motor Speedway (July 20 at 2 p.m. ET)
Champions Round: Indianapolis Motor Speedway (July 27 at 2 p.m. ET)
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