NASCAR Pushes the Envelope by Combining Big Data with Augmented Reality in the World of Live Customer Engagement The celebratory burnout after a NASCAR race has become a very popular way for NASCAR drivers to celebrate a victory, much to the delight of its fans. In fact, up to the mid-2010s there was even a contest prior to the NSCAR AllStar race that allowed drivers to compete for "best burnout"! The Company On December 14 1947. William Henry Getty France - an American race car driver known as "Big Bill"-met with a group of racing promoters, drivers, and mechanics to share his dream of establishing an organization to develop a set of rules and regulations to help promote stock car racing in America. Following a series of meetings, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) was officially created on February 21, 1948. Today Jim France-son of Bill France Sr., the founder and first president of NASCAR - is NASCAR's Chairman and CEO. Although Daytona Beach had been running car races on its beach/road course since 1936, the first NASCAR sanctioned race was not run until February 15, 1948. Red Byron won the race in a Ford. "Big Bill" raced that day, too and finished fifth. Eleven years late, on February 221959 , the first Daytona 500 race was run on the high-banked 2.5 mile Daytona International Speedway track. More than 41,000 fans were in attendance and the winner wasn't decided until 61 hours after the checkered flag was waved. Lee Petty was declared the winner-in a dramatic photo finish-by two feet. At the 62nd Annual Daytona 500 held on February 16, 2020 more than 250,000 fans cheered on America's top stock car drivers. Brad Keselowski, a NASCAR Cup Series champion is just one of the NASCAR drivers who felt the pressure "all the time" to provide exciting racing and attract new fans to NASCAR. He described his concern for the sport when he said, 'The sport's going through its own set of struggles and the responsibility to increase NASCAR's audience falls in everybody's hands except for independent media." Many NASCAR drivers were seeing fans walk away and felt an urgent responsibility to attract new fans and bring long-lost ones back to stock car racing. Several longtime sponsors including Lowes and Target had left and although the Daytona 500 is always sold out, race attendance overall was inconsistent and shrinking. For example, at the Food City 500 held in Spring 2019, the 150,000 capacity Bristol Speedway in Tennessee attracted a mere 38,000 . The crowd was so small that speedway management didn't open some sections of the track to "enhance the fan experience" by bringing fans together in the straightaway sections on both side of the track. The TV ratings were also on the decline and had hit a record low following a pattern of decline over the past several years. Coupled with the recent retirement of some of NASCAR's biggest stars like Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon, and Tony Stewart it's clear that the sport is undergoing some big changes. It was agreed that NASCAR and its sponsors needed to make the sport more "fun and engaging" for its fans and drivers. The Solution NASCAR top management came up with the idea of bringing the experience of being at a race or at racing activities like burnouts to millions of fans who cannot attend an event in person. By integrating big data and augmented reality (AR) into front-end apps NASCAR saw a way to engage with its fans at a more personal level. The AR burnout simulation experience took many months of research and due diligence and in September 2019, NASCAR mobile app (https://www.nascar.com/mobile) users were able to use AR to get behind the wheel of their favorite NASCAR Playoff driver's car and perform burnouts in a 3 D-rendered vehicle. The NASCAR AR burnout Experience driven by Goodyear was available to all users with AR-enabled devices through the end of the NASCAR playoffs. AR is a key area of development at NASCAR where the company is continually seeking new ways to bring immersive experiences to fans using next-generation technology. "Going into this project, we knew it was going to be leading edge, so we leaned on business partners with established mobile delivery platforms such as Apple and Google, said Tim Clark. NASCAR senior vice president and chief digital officer, "We also employed a software development agency to assist us with developing the AR applications, and we had a team of around half a dozen developers and specialists on our own staff that we dedicated to the project. "Since video data used for the burnouts was for simulations and not real-time video, the data was stored in an offline data repository. This data was optimized for performance so that bandwidth NASCAR top management came up with the idea of bringing the experience of being at a race or at racing activities like burnouts to millions of fans who cannot attend an event in person. By integrating big data and augmented reality (AR) into front-end apps NASCAR saw a way to engage with its fans at a more personal level. The AR burnout simulation experience took many months of research and due diligence and in September 2019, NASCAR mobile app (https://www.nascar.com/mobile) users were able to use AR to get behind the wheel of their favorite NASCAR Playoff driver's car and perform burnouts in a 3 D-rendered vehicle. The NASCAR AR burnout Experience driven by Goodyear was available to all users with AR-enabled devices through the end of the NASCAR playoffs. AR is a key area of development at NASCAR where the company is continually seeking new ways to bring immersive experiences to fans using next-generation technology. "Going into this project, we knew it was going to be leading edge,' so we leaned on business partners with established mobile delivery platforms such as Apple and Google, said Tim Clark, NASCAR senior vice president and chief digital officer, "We also employed a software development agency to assist us with developing the AR applications, and we had a team of around half a dozen developers and specialists on our own staff that we dedicated to the project." Since video data used for the burnouts was for simulations and not real-time video, the data was stored in an offline data repository. This data was optimized for performance so that bandwidth constraints with user mobile devices were minimized. The project involved capturing 3D renderings of cars and then creating a virtualization of burnouts that approximated the experience of being at a live burnout event. In addition, to the AR burnout experience, NASCAR marshalled its cache of big data to create ten live 360 -degree video streams to give viewers a look inside the race cars of various drivers during the races. The first was in driver Bubba' Wallace's car at the 2019 Daytona 500. The Outcome NASCAR now considers AR as an integral part of its customer outreach and marketing strategies. According to Clark "Augmented reality is helping us revolutionize the way NASCAR fans engage with the sport. Our goal is to bring fans as close to the sport as possible, and AR is an ideal medium to help us accomplish that... Although it's too early to determine the long-time value of the NASCAR AR Burnout Experience and the 360 -degree video streams, Clark added "we are just beginning to get feedback from fans ... and the feedback has been very positive." Questions 1. What issues were NASCAR dealing with that led it to consider using AR in its marketing strategy? 2. How did NASCAR approach the problem? 3. What benefits did AR offer to NASCAR fans? 4. What do you think NASCAR could do to further improve on its AR and big data initiatives? Sources: Compiled from Eubanks (2019), Geekadmin (2019), Martinelli (2019), McCornick (2019), Meredith (2019), Patel