America Online and NASCAR Announce Extensive Marketing and Promotional Agreement; Multi Year Agreement Brings Together Major Sports League with Leading Interactive Brands
10 October 2000
America Online and NASCAR Announce Extensive Marketing and Promotional Agreement; Multi Year Agreement Brings Together Major Sports League with Leading Interactive Brands
Business Editors/Hi-Tech WritersDAYTONA BEACH, Fla. & DULLES, Va.-- Oct. 10, 2000--
NASCAR News and Features to be Easily Accessible
Across AOL Brands, and AOL to be Promoted at NASCAR
Tracks, Races and Other Offline Channels
The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) and America Online, Inc. , the world's leading interactive services company, today announced an extensive marketing and promotional agreement under which NASCAR's motorsports content will be extensively promoted across several AOL brands and AOL will receive significant offline promotion from NASCAR during its popular racing events nationwide.
NASCAR is the most popular form of motorsports in the United States in addition to being one of the most popular professional sports in the country, and under this multi-year agreement AOL will feature and promote the popular NASCAR Web site, customized for key AOL brands, including AOL, AOL.COM, CompuServe and Digital City.
These sites will offer NASCAR racing fans convenient access to NASCAR's wide variety of content and features, including racing scores and statistics, chats with NASCAR personalities, race video highlights, archives of past races, and additional online auto racing content.
AOL will receive significant offline promotion from NASCAR, including prominent brand promotions at major NASCAR events in the NASCAR Winston Cup Series, NASCAR Busch Series and NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.
Additionally, NASCAR will promote AOL Keyword: NASCAR via television, radio and in NASCAR's wide array of licensed publications as well as signage on certain NASCAR-owned event vehicles.
Along with access to NASCAR's wide array of motorsports news and information, AOL members and users of AOL's family of brands will be able to take advantage of favorite AOL tools on the customized NASCAR sites, including AOL Search, My Calendar, Digital City's local city guide, and Quick Checkout incorporated into the customized sites to make it easy to keep track of the races and communicate with other fans.
"Today's announcement with AOL will allow the NASCAR fans to experience more and bring them even closer to our sports drivers, teams, and tracks," said Bray Cary, Vice President of Broadcasting and Technology for NASCAR. "We believe that this agreement, making NASCAR's racing content easily accessible to AOL's 24 million members, will enhance the promotion of the sport of NASCAR."
Barry Schuler, President of AOL Interactive Services, said: "NASCAR is clearly one of the world's most popular sports leagues, and our members are the most active and involved community of sports fans in cyberspace. We are very pleased to work with NASCAR to bring AOL and CompuServe members, in addition to the visitors to our Web-based brands, convenient access to great NASCAR content and features, and to introduce and familiarize the NASCAR audience with AOL at great racing events nationwide."
Founded in 1948, NASCAR offers the most competitive form of motorsports in the world with close, side-by-side competition serving as its foundation. NASCAR features 13 different series of racing, including the immensely popular NASCAR Winston Cup Series, with approximately 2,200 sanctioned events at more than 130 tracks in 40 different states around the country each year.
About America Online, Inc: Founded in 1985, America Online, Inc., based in Dulles, Virginia, is the world's leader in interactive services, Web brands, Internet technologies and e-commerce services.