Veteran NASCAR driver Tony Stewart gave fans a first person account of his final race this past Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
As part of 14 Days of Smoke — a special tribute to the 45-year-old Columbus, Ind. native — NASCAR and Stewart had an in-car camera live streaming his last race via Facebook Live on NASCAR’s page. The video had 1.4 million views, 22,000 comments and nearly 10,500 shares to date.
“NASCAR is a vibrant, content-rich sport, and we’ve seen unprecedented social engagement this season by bringing that content straight to our fans,” Scott Warfield, NASCAR Managing Director of Social Media, said in a statement.
During 2016, NASCAR has continued to make strides across its social accounts — namely Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat — where it has received nearly 240 million engagements and four billion impressions.
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Like with the Facebook Live activation capping off Stewart’s 18-year Sprint Cup career, NASCAR has found other unique ways of leveraging social throughout the racing season to further engage fans.
For example, during the The Chase — where Twitter and NASCAR created a special Twitter emoji — the sports property also commissioned the services of various illustrators to create custom images for Instagram, giving fans an inside look at the content process via NASCAR’s Instagram Story. In addition, Snapchat and NASCAR inked a deal for four Live Stories this year while even drivers’ Twitter handles replaced their actual names on car windshields earlier this season.
Following a pivot online a few years ago, Warfield recently commented to SportTechie that NASCAR continues to see social media as a “fan growth tool,” one that it can monetize but also reach its target audience.
“The No. 1 priority (on social media) will be to speak to audiences where they are, when they’re there and optimize the content to work for that platform,” he said.