NASCAR heads to Vegas, looking for that gambling jackpot

By Bob Pockrass
FOX Sports NASCAR Writer

As NASCAR heads to Las Vegas, there will be talk of odds and potential parlay head-to-head bets, just as there typically is for the Vegas race weekend.

But with the adoption of sports gambling in several states, what about everywhere else? NASCAR’s challenge in the gambling space is growth, but it has been even more daunting than expected.

There has been no sudden boon in gambling on NASCAR, though the sanctioning body can cite a little bit of growth. NASCAR accounted for 0.25% of all money spent in 2021 betting on sports (so $25 of every $1,000), up from 0.1% in 2020.

"It’s great for our sport to be more involved in the sports betting world," said RCR driver Austin Dillon, whose team has a deal with BetMGM. "It gives fans another thing to really cheer for and get engaged in the sport. I haven’t really experienced anything more than what I have in the past with fantasy NASCAR."

NASCAR executives can see, literally, that there is nowhere to go but up when it comes to percentage of the gambling handle. And they see a potential increase as a way to grow their fan base more than as a revenue generator.

"When sports betting legalized, people were already betting on NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, whether it was through their local bookie, offshore, any sort of illegal ways that they were betting," said NASCAR’s sports betting managing director Joe Solosky.

"People weren't really betting on NASCAR because those offshore books or the bookies weren't offering odds on them. So with NASCAR, we were a little bit behind the curve in the sense that bookmakers weren't that crazy about working with us because the handle number was so low."

NASCAR has tried to increase bookmaker interest through three key areas.

— The first is partnering with bookmakers. It has a deal with BetMGM in which NASCAR’s website has a betting slip that links to that bookmaker’s website. It has a deal with Barstool Sportsbook for Phoenix Raceway and with WynnBet for its Richmond and Martinsville tracks in Virginia for signage and activation. And it has a deal with Fubo Gaming for content sharing though one of its content suppliers.

— It also has deals with gambling industry suppliers. It uses Sportsradar as its integrity partner to help educate people within the sport on what are ethically sound practices. Genius Sports has a deal to provide NASCAR data from NASCAR’s live timing and scoring to bookmakers. IMG handles international streaming rights. And the American Gaming Association works with NASCAR to educate fans about gambling responsibly.

— NASCAR then has deals with a few content suppliers (such as The Action Network) to help gamblers make picks and promote ways to gamble beyond the winner of the race. NASCAR is trying to promote betting on head-to-head matchups and believes the content partnerships can help those who don’t follow NASCAR understand that there could be interest in such wagers.

NASCAR also has a deal with BettorView that it hopes can start producing results this year, with touch screens at NASCAR-owned tracks. BettorView would work with sportsbooks for more in-race, at-track betting.

It has taken NASCAR the past four years to build this foundation of entry into the gambling space — a seemingly slow process, considering the relatively quick movements of states to legalize sports betting.

"We're getting bombarded with requests from suppliers and vendors to work with us," Solosky said. "And we only have the bandwidth for only so many things. So we want to make sure that we think about the best ideas and what fits into our strategy.

"And our strategy overall is to increase the amount of people who are betting on NASCAR."

Solosky would like to see the number of sportsbook partnerships double this year. And he has been encouraged by data indicating that the amount of money bet on the Daytona 500 and the race last weekend at Fontana was more than the first three races of 2021.

He also is encouraged that legalized sports betting hasn’t, as he put it, "really hit NASCAR country yet."

"Florida was live for six weeks but won't be live [again] for a while," Solosky said. "North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Texas, all those states haven’t legalized yet, and those are huge populations who have a strong loyalty to the sport.

"And we'll see tremendous growth once those states go live."

Solosky said about 20% of NASCAR fans gamble on the sport, about the same amount for other major sports. And while the sportsbooks might want to tap into those fans to generate revenue, NASCAR is more interested in creating new fans.

With that in mind, NASCAR wants to work with sportsbooks to promote to a general audience while potentially supplying them with assets through NASCAR’s digital media, hospitality and email lists so they can tap in to the NASCAR fan base.

"It's all about this hypothesis that if we get someone to bet on the sport who's never watched it before, they may watch the sport," Solosky said. "And if they watch a sport, they might say, 'Oh, that was cool. I had a great experience. I might go to a race.’"

What to watch for

This section used to include lots of stats from previous races — stats that are pretty much meaningless because the car is totally different.

"It just races so different that a lot of the concepts that you would bring as a crew chief to call a race into, like, a short track race or a specific intermediate race, it's all different," Kyle Larson crew chief Cliff Daniels said. "It's unique to itself, and it's going to be my job to be a student of the game and try to make sure we do it right every week."

So what to watch for is how teams build off their performances Sunday at Fontana to this race at Las Vegas. Can Richard Childress Racing, Trackhouse Racing and Petty GMS Motorsports build off the strong starts? They showed they can make good adjustments on these cars to make them go fast.

The other thing to watch for is pit stops and, if teams don’t need a full tank of gas to get to the end of a stage or the race, might they decide not to fill up the tank in order to have a quicker pit stop. Some teams appeared to experiment with that at Fontana, some finding success and others realizing they maybe should have spent time in the pits not to add fuel but to make adjustments to keep up with the changes to track temperature and tire rubber on the surface as well as the competition. 

Thinking out loud

NASCAR has increased the amount of time in practice this week to 35 minutes, ditching the 15-minute group sessions for one overall session with all cars. That is a good idea, considering the number of spins drivers had in practice last week at Fontana.

The 15-minute group practices were good for television – time to interview drivers when their group wasn’t on-track. But 35 minutes would be better than 15 minutes, as far as teams getting some decent feedback.

The problem is they can’t make major changes to their cars and get only one set of tires. So it's questionable how much that extra 20 minutes can be put to use. An answer should come this weekend as to if it actually is much more valuable, and that’s not a bad thing for NASCAR to know.

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They said it

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Bob Pockrass has spent decades covering motorsports, including the past 30 Daytona 500s. He joined FOX Sports in 2019 following stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @bobpockrass. Looking for more NASCAR content? Sign up for the FOX Sports NASCAR Newsletter with Bob Pockrass!