What the NFL Can Learn from NASCAR

A few weeks ago, I attended my first NASCAR race — the Coke Zero 400 at Daytona International Speedway. I went with my wife, Stephanie, and my close friend, Bryon, who is a NASCAR junkie. Thank God for him, because he showed us the ropes of attending a NASCAR race in person.

I am as casual a racing fan as it gets. I know who the key drivers and teams are, I know some of the history, and I have a couple of drivers whom I root for consistently (Danica Patrick, Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt, Jr.). But I do not have a giant #3 Fathead on my office wall, and never will. Personally, I think they all turn left too damn much.

Bryon told us ahead of time: rent this thing called FanVision. It’s a tiny wireless TV device that shows you everything you need: the race feed from TV, Motor Racing Network’s audio feed (highly entertaining radio, by the way), stats, bios, iso cams, spotter radio feeds and the like. I thought, hell, I’m a dork for that kind of stuff anyway, so why the hell not?

I could not have gotten through the race without it.

The FanVision device not only supplemented the race that was happening in front of me; it enhanced my entire race experience, and that of my wife, by a factor of ten. Midway through, she was asking me to switch to Danica Patricks’ in-car video feed so she could watch. That’s how you hook someone on your sport. Even at $59.99, it was worth twice the price. Perhaps the most amazing thing about it (and this may seem silly) was that the thing actually worked exactly as advertised.

To NASCAR’s credit, they have mastered the enhancement of the live event to make it a more appealing draw than watching it on TV. As good as the TV product is, it pales in comparison to attending the actual event.

So my next thought was this: Why wouldn’t other sports include something like this?

FanVision has a contract with NASCAR where they can rent out their video devices (and several other types) at every track all throughout the season. The devices themselves are wireless, internet capable, and rugged. They even give you the option to connect a headphone splitter so two can watch one device (as Stephanie and I did). It only works inside the venue, but if you want, you can purchase your own device and take it with you.

Other sports have caught on, including, perhaps surprisingly, golf. The PGA Championship is making these devices available for fans who are attending n person, so they can keep track of who’s doing what in golf’s last major.

Surprisingly, only a few NFL and college football teams caught on. It received rave reviews after its introduction in 2010. Here’s CNET’s review of the device:

But once their three-year try-out contract ran out in 12 NFL cities, the experiment ended. This baffles me.

The NFL has made it a priority to improve the in-stadium experience for its fans. The Commissioner made it a priority, especially post-lockout. Goodell has openly spoken about the need to draw fans back into NFL stadiums with improvements in technology. The reasoning is simple: Why would I, as a consumer, go about the horrendous expense ($443.93 on average for a family of four, according to Yahoo! Sports), when I can sit on my comfortable couch, with my team on the screen and RedZone in picture-in-picture, buy cheaper beer and food, and keep track of my fantasy team on my iPad?

If you’re the NFL, and you want to provide a premium for going to a game rather than watching it at home, why would you not re-sign with FanVision and expand it to all 32 teams? So far, all of the nebulous things the NFL has discussed have largely been empty and useless to the modern fan.

Making this non-sensical situation even stranger is the fact that FanVision is owned by the same guy who owns the Miami Dolphins, Stephen Ross.

Making FanVision as part and parcel of the fan experience as it is in NASCAR is the best way for the NFL to get its fans back into its stadiums. It’s not hard:

• Show the in-game network TV feed by default.
• Enable fans to choose their announcers (TV, home radio, road radio).
• Enable NFL Red Zone on the device, so viewers can switch back and forth between the live game and all the others.
• Show multiple instant replay angles on demand.
• Iso cameras of star players, including both quarterbacks, just like what NBC does with Sunday Night Football Extra.
• Live stats, including the ability to import your fantasy team from NFL.com’s fantasy leagues.

This is not the be-all, end-all. There are a few other things the NFL can copy from NASCAR to enhance its fan experience, such as:

• Make concessions cheaper. Daytona International Speedway allows fans to bring in one soft-sided cooler with whatever you want in it. $12 for a beer is an outrage. Nothing says, “We like our fans but love their bank accounts much more” than that. Allow fans to bring their own food and drink (read: introduce competition) and you can actually lower the prices of your own concessions.
• Family-friendly seating areas. Don’t put the family of four next to the four drunk bros. If families want a place to sit where they don’t feel threatened by the rowdies, surely this can be arranged during the seat selection process, and especially by designating certain parts of the stadium as non-alcohol areas.
• Embrace tailgating. Your collegiate friends know all about this. Turn every stadium’s parking lot into the NFL Experience — a giant festival with appearances by legends, shopping, and tons of games for the kids. Corporate sponsors will eat this up, just like they have with NASCAR.

Some teams are already doing these, to varying success. But if the NFL is really serious about making the experience at the stadium better than the experience at home, these points, plus the addition of FanVision, should be the starting points.