Comcast Will Sponsor NASCAR Series

Ten-year deal is worth $200 million.
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Comcast will sponsor NASCAR’s secondary race series in a 10-year deal worth $200 million, Sports Business Daily reports.

The announcement follows several months of negotiations and represents a major achievement for NASCAR. The sanctioning body began looking for a title sponsor late last year after current sponsor Nationwide Insurance decided to discontinue its sponsorship. Comcast emerged as a viable replacement after the company’s sports TV group, NBC, signed a 10-year, $4.4B rights deal with NASCAR. As part of the deal, Comcast agreed to spend $10M marketing and promoting the sport. Its marketing team saw title sponsorship of NASCAR’s secondary series as a way to fulfill that obligation and also promote its cable TV, broadband and phone business unit, Xfinity.

The “secondary series” means that the new Xfinity Series is the motorsports equivalent or so of Triple-A baseball — only with much more of national following than any minor league team could ever muster.