Your client revving up for motorsports

In October the Circuit of the Americas in Austin will host the United States Grand Prix, the only Formula 1 event of the year in the U.S.

Formula 1 is the most popular auto racing series in the world, known for its affluent fans-U.S. fans of F1 make $100,000 per year on average.

With that high profile comes high prices for advertisers and sponsors, who tend to be large companies with big budgets.

Targeting these affluent fans in Austin the weekend of Oct. 23-25 may be a good strategy for deep-pocketed advertisers. But there are other auto racing options in the U.S. for OOH advertisers, some of them quite affordable.

Here’s a look at the top three.

NASCAR Racing

While F1 is popular worldwide, NASCAR is the most popular racing series in the U.S.

It’s an ideal place to target men. Fans of NASCAR are 94 percent white and 63 percent male. They skew older; just 30 percent are in the 18-34 age bracket.

NASCAR fans also make less than F1 fans, between $40,000 and $75,000 per year on average.

The top NASCAR Sprint Cup race this year, the Daytona 500, drew 13.4 million total viewers.

But it’s one super fan base. Races draw gigantic crowds. Average race attendance for Sprint Cup events, NASCAR’s top division, is 99,853, and races also bring in millions of TV viewers each week.

The NASCAR Sprint Cup series’ top event of the year is the season-opening Daytona 500, and in recent years the final 10 races of the season have become more important with introduction of the Chase For the Sprint Cup, essentially the playoffs of NASCAR racing.

NASCAR also sponsors other racing series, including the Xfinity Series and the Camping World Truck Series.

For each level, ad options are similar.

Advertisers can partner with NASCAR for a season-long sponsorship, deal with individual tracks for ads at a specific race, or negotiate with team owners and drivers for ads on cars and drivers’ uniforms.

The NASCAR Sprint Cup season is lengthy, with 36 races running from mid-February to late November. That means a lot of opportunities for advertising.

For NASCAR Sprint Cup, the season-ending race weekend is called Ford Championship Weekend, and in the past NASCAR’s sponsors have set up a fan fest that includes interactive booths and exhibits, a parade and live music.

At previous fan fests, Sunoco set up a lounge where they gave away free snow cones, while Sony set up an area where fans could test a racing game for its PlayStation system.

IndyCar Racing

The IndyCar Series is the largest American open-wheel racing series, with its top event of the season coming in week six, the Indianapolis 500.

The IndyCar season is much shorter than the NASCAR Sprint Cup season, with 16 races running from late March to the end of August.

The year’s top IndyCar race, the Indianapolis 500, averaged 6.4 million total viewers this year.

Fan demographics for IndyCar are fairly similar to NASCAR. They are 67 percent male and 33 percent female, with 28 percent of fans ages 18-34.

IndyCar fans are more affluent, with 54 percent making at least $100,000 per year.

Advertising opportunities include naming rights to a race. This season IndyCar races include the Angie’s List Grand Prix of Indianapolis, the Firestone 600 and the GoPro Grand Prix of Sonoma.

Advertisers also can work with individual teams and drivers for sponsorships on cars and uniforms, or with individual tracks for signage and other ad opportunities at each particular venue.

IndyCar has also set up fan fests at its races, and the series also sends drivers out for personal appearances at businesses within the market to meet with fans and drive foot traffic.

During the weekend of the ABC Supply Wisconsin 250 in early July, three-time event winner Ryan Hunter-Reay showed up at Sendik’s Food Mart in nearby Greenfield, Wisconsin, while drivers Marco Andretti and Jack Hawksworth made appearances at a local Honda dealership to sign autographs.

Meanwhile, drivers Josef Newgarden, Simon Pagenaud and Stefano Coletti appeared at the Miller Time Pub in Milwaukee and worked as bartenders for charity.

NHRA Racing

The National Hot Rod Association, or NHRA, is the governing body for drag racing in the U.S. Its main series is the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series, which is sponsored by the soft drink.

Fox Sports recently got carriage rights to NHRA races, which had been on ESPN.

Drag racing is quite different than other forms of racing. Rather than driving around a track for a set amount of laps, the drivers take part in a series of short sprints shoulder-to-shoulder to other drivers in a tournament-like format. The car that wins the final race wins the event.

The NHRA season runs from February to November, and involves four different types of vehicles. This year there are 24 Top Fuel, Funny Car and Pro Stock car events, as well as 16 Pro Stock Motorcycle events.

Some NHRA events take place in top markets such as Chicago, Denver and Seattle, while others take place in smaller towns that are within a reasonable driving distance from major markets.

For example, the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals in August take place in Brainerd, Minnesota, a two-hour drive from Minneapolis.

For NHRA drag races, the most visible form of advertising and sponsorship is title sponsorship of an actual event, or else sponsoring a team’s car.

But another good opportunity in this series is signage on the guard wall along the track, which is seen all day by fans in attendance, as well as TV viewers. There is also signage available on the grandstands and on the towers placed behind the starting line.

Tags: drag racing, forumla 1, indycar, motorsports, nascar, nhra, OOH, out of home