00:00 Speaker A
But I want to start with just the money that’s flowing into this sport. You we heard from Motorsport CEO Warner Bell to open things up. He said the average value of a sponsorship for the NFL, 745,000. That’s a lot. For F1, it’s 6 million. Why do you think this is such a lucrative business investment at this point in time? Is this, are we in this juncture moment for the industry?
00:19 Speaker B
I think the title of this meeting is spot on. Motorsports is on the rise for lots of reasons. Our, um, total sponsorship in the last five years is more than doubled. So, I won’t give you the average number, but it’s going up. And for us, the big challenge is to move from what we call endemic sponsors to more consumer-oriented brands. And our partnership with Fox where we can package our properties and their media rights or their media benefits is important to that.
00:43 Speaker A
And I want to talk about that that partnership a little bit more because Fox owns a third of Penske Entertainment and this is a very unique deal. Why go that route and how has it been so far?
00:51 Speaker B
It’s I’ll I’ll do it backwards. It’s been phenomenal. Uh, Roger Penske was not looking to sell stock. He owned 100% of the stock, happy with that, doesn’t need the money. Um, but we had a great start to our media relationship with Fox where they showed they’re completely dedicated, very creative and committed to growing our property. So when they came forward and said, any chance we could uh, talk about buying some equity? It was a quick, yeah, let’s talk about it and then even quicker getting the deal done. I- it happened because we trust him, because they’ve proven that their capabilities. Um, and to to have them right there looking at how to grow the value of the company in the long haul, uh, is is phenomenal. They are lots of things, but fundamentally, they’re marketers and great leagues have to be marketers from the time we get up in the morning till we go to bed. So their influence beyond what you see on television, their influence in all of our discussions about all of our decisions is really very helpful.
01:40 Speaker A
And you talked about this partnership in the panel that you were just on and what stuck out to me is you said, this is important because audiences know where to go to watch. And even anecdotally when I watch the NFL, there’s a lot of different places you can watch a singular game, whether it be on streaming or network television. You have multiple networks at play. So talk to me about that singularity element and how that gives you an advantage, especially to those younger consumers.
01:57 Speaker B
That was huge for us to to know that every live, every race will be on live on Fox network, which is available everywhere, is is huge. It’s appointment viewing. The fan or the fa- the person we’re going to make a fan knows where to look and how to watch us and they can get it. So it’s simple, it’s not complicated, but it’s more than that as well. It’s not just that we’re really the only US sport with an all network audience. Um, that’s why we grew 27% in the average number of people watching us this year. It’s also then that they get completely committed to creative ways to promote us. So they’ve got, you know, football talent talking about Indycar and at our races. Gronkowski was the host of our snake pit EDM festival at the 500 in the middle of the track. It’s the crossover benefits, the spots they created to uh, introduce or reintroduce some of our best, um, most appealing drivers publicly, which they ran during the Super Bowl, are just evidence that it’s a broad relationship.
02:46 Speaker A
Right, it’s that financial stake in the league, really, which is really a vote of confidence in the league and the sustainability of it. And and we have seen it in other types of deals, ESPN taking a 10% stake in the NFL. Do you think this is going to maybe be the new structure moving forward when it comes to sports rights, especially since sports seems to be the one thing that’s tethering people to that network television viewership?
03:00 Speaker B
Yeah, um I I think it’s happening all over. There’s a lot of, there are a lot of assets chasing sports, not just media assets. But it makes sense for them. They can help us grow and they can capitalize on their own work uh, over time if and when they ever decided to exit, makes all kinds of sense to us.
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