NASCAR Joins The Sports Betting Talk, Adding Official Partner In Genius Sports

• The partners expect to sell the live betting platform to legal sportsbooks—both international and domestic.
• Auto Racing has only accounted for a fraction of a percent of the entire legal sports betting handle.
• NASCAR and Genius Sports believe this partnership will open up viewership across the world.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Joining the ranks of the other professional leagues in the country, NASCAR announced on Friday that they have entered into their own betting partnership with Genius Sports.

The deal will allow for Genius Sports to develop and implement a live betting platform for legal sportsbooks while having exclusive access to official data.

The platform is expected to be sold to sportsbooks around the world, where bettors can wager not only on the final result of the race but prop bets throughout the race as well.

“This new relationship will provide another entry point to the sport and complements our strategy to create a more immersive experience for fans,” said SVP of Broadcasting and Innovation at NASCAR, Brian Herbst in the league’s press release.

At the start of this year, NASCAR permitted the tracks and teams to allow sponsorship deals to come from legal sports betting companies and books, which made us believe something else was in the works. NASCAR’s hope is to deepen their fan engagement, as the league has seen ratings drop steadily over the last ten years.

“Our global relationships will help bring the excitement of NASCAR racing to new audiences both within the U.S. and in new territories around the world,” said Mark Locke, Genius Sports CEO.

This live betting product will only be available in the US within states with legal sports betting as well internationally in countries with licensed and regulated sportsbooks. Both Genius Sports and NASCAR believe this will allow the partnership to monitor any obscure betting patterns, providing transparency to the bettors.

“What could happen in the next five seconds? What could happen in the next lap? It opens the door to a massively exciting new market,” said Chris Dougan, a spokesman for Genius Sports.

Licensed sportsbooks throughout the country have seen over $3 billion bet on sports since the beginning of the year and NASCAR is hoping to take a piece of this market. Take Delaware for example, which will be hosting the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series at Dover International Speedway this weekend. Less than 0.1% of their handle has been responsible for auto racing, according to the director of the state lottery, Vernon Kirk.

That hasn’t stopped the positivity from NASCAR.

“We weren’t really in the gaming conversation until this year. We’re still taking a kind of pragmatic, staggered approach into it,” said Herbst.

Like other sports betting partnerships amongst the professional leagues, any person involved in the sports shall be restricted from wagering as well as releasing private information.

The betting platform is expected to be ready in 2020, after an expected half year to fully develop and test the technology.

News tags: Genuis Sports | NASCAR