By Dennis McCafferty
This article appeared in the April/May 2005 issue of Web Host Industry Review magazine. Click here for a free subscription.
May 16, 2005 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — February 2000. It’s the first year since Turner Sports took over NASCAR.com. The sport is about to explode, transforming from a southeast US regional attraction to a national passion that will emerge as the second most popular sport on national television. As a result, NASCAR will successfully cultivate sponsoring partnerships with the top names in tech ? Nextel, AOL and Alltel among them. In its first year, Turner Sports is careful with NASCAR.com. It focuses on news content delivery, instead of loading up with a lot of streaming bells and whistles.
Then, on the first and biggest race of the year, NASCAR.com (nascar.com) is hit with the most devastating news that it has ever handled: racing legend Dale Earnhardt Sr. dies in a crash in the last lap of the Daytona 500, considered the Super Bowl of the sport. In the days and weeks that follow, controversy arises over a range of topics including the cause of the crash, the lack of driver safety devices to prevent fatal head and neck injuries and a media outlet’s request for a release of Earnhardt’s autopsy photos.
“This happened in only our third week of operation,” recalls Drew Reifenberger, executive vice president of program planning, acquisitions and interactive for Atlanta-based Turner Sports (cnnsi.com/turnersports/), which stepped in to run the NASCAR Web site as an extension of its existing broadcast relationship with the sport. “We were on the spot, for certain, and we knew we had to get it right. We needed to provide complete coverage, but it needed to be respectful. We reported on everything: the head and neck device situation, the autopsy photos ? everything. The fans needed a place to go and grieve too, so we made sure our message boards were connected throughout so they could post their sentiments.
“We quickly realized that ? once the race was over and the broadcast was finished ? that we were the first source of news for these fans. They were shocked and stunned and needed to know more about what had happened.”
With the site’s traffic numbers spiking to six times normal volume, Turner Sports and NASCAR.com proved itself to fans. And it helped bring technological legitimacy to a sport eager to squash many stereotypes about its image ? that its fans were tattooed rednecks with no use for the Internet. Thanks to continued partnerships with Web hosts, Turner has swiftly elevated the online offerings at NASCAR.com. It added in-car audio streaming in that first year, allowing fans to “listen in” on driver conversations with crew chiefs. In the seasons that followed, it boosted streaming image presentations of drivers on the track, added Spanish-language content, fan polls and self-produced preview shows via streamed audio and video. In the future, Turner Sports will be looking to rapidly develop wireless access to its content.
“It’s in the early stages now,” says Reifenberger. “It’s all very basic now and that’s how it starts. But in three or four years, it will be wildly sophisticated.”
In the interest of connecting fans with bulletin board discussion links and the e-commerce property of NASCAR.com, called NASCAR Superstore, Turner Sports has partnered with established Web hosting and e-commerce enabling companies. King of Prussia, Pennsylvania-based GSI Commerce hosts and enables the e-commerce activity of the Superstore, and Littleton, Massachusetts-based Prospero Technologies (prospero.com) hosts the bulletin board links.
The Superstore is an especially critical site component for NASCAR, since stock car racing is possibly the most merchandise-driven of pro sports. Some NASCAR fans want any merchandise they can get their hands on. Indeed, some devote entire rooms of their homes ? sometimes the entire home ? in homage to their favorite drivers. Keeping all of this business going is the responsibility of GSI Commerce, which performs a much broader range of roles for NASCAR.com than simple Web hosting. The relationship demonstrates how a Web hosting company can offer a one-stop shop for a large range of services.
Partnered with Turner for more than two years now, the e-commerce company has continued to improve the Superstore. It has expanded and segmented the customer databases for better sales targeting and follow-through. It has expanded international shipping capacity. It has added a drop shipping capability, which allows the store to provide large, bulky or specialty items like NASCAR-themed coffee tables, shipped directly to the customer.
“For the Superstore, for which GSI Commerce also provides fulfillment and customer service, to take all of those large products, or even some of the more obscure ones, and stock them in our warehouse is impractical,” says Steve Bontempo, director of sporting goods business management for GSI Commerce. “Drop shipping allows us to offer a wider variety of NASCAR products to the consumer. It provides a seamless, brand-strengthening experience for NASCAR customers.”
In the future, GSI Commerce anticipates marketing with major NASCAR sponsors to further integrate them with the online Superstore. Gillette, for example, has come up with a “Young Guns” promotion that includes high-profile national television ads featuring Dale Earnhardt Jr., Matt Kenseth and other top drivers. GSI Commerce has, in turn, arranged for the sale of Young Guns hats, t-shirts and other items in the Superstore. GSI Commerce is also increasing its print production of catalogues, which are mailed to NASCAR Superstore customers.”We want to marry online and offline together,” Bontempo says, “because it stimulates sales. It is proven that this strategy will continue to grow an online business. We’re always looking to take the NASCAR Superstore experience to the next level.”
Surprisingly, the Superstore actually sees traffic peak as the season ends, after the big championship races are finished in November and holiday shopping kicks in. In fact, 65 percent of overall traffic to NASCAR.com goes to the Superstore in December, when the online store handles more than 3 million unique users. GSI hosts NASCAR’s Superstore on the same e-commerce platform it uses to operate the e-commerce businesses of approximately 45 other retailers, branded manufacturers, entertainment companies and professional sports organizations. Each partner gets a customized version of the platform to suit its individual needs. The company operates two data facilities in the mid-Atlantic region, one in use daily and one as a backup. If NASCAR Superstore customers have questions about their purchases, a customer service agent in a call center in Florida will answer via phone or email.
Prospero Technologies has taken on the expansion of NASCAR.com’s large-scale chat functions ? a challenge because each user requires a persistent connection to a dedicated server. NASCAR Nation, as it’s often called, is a passionate fan base that will flock to a chat after practically every race or during-the-week incident. Cars crash. Drivers get into fights. Opposing pit crews tussle, too. And driver teams are often docked points toward the Nextel Cup championship for various rules violations.
Last season, online chats heated up when Earnhardt Jr., a star driver and fan favorite, lost a significant 25 points after letting a profanity slip during a post-race network TV interview following his win at Talladega, Alabama. Many chat participants were outraged that the beloved, charismatic son of the late legend could fall short of the cup trophy because of an incident that had nothing to do with race competition. Such unpredictable spikes could easily lead to site operation difficulties, were the host unprepared. But Prospero says it remains ready for such events.
“The greatest challenge is forecasting attendance for live chats,” says Rusty Williams, the Propero vice president who oversees sales and marketing. “We work closely with NASCAR to ensure the appropriate capacity is in place. With caching, queuing, and pooled resources, we haven’t had any significant issues handling the overall load and spikes for NASCAR’s message boards. There are many value-added components in Prospero’s platform. In addition to scaleability, there are advanced moderation features to help eliminate inappropriate content. There are usage reports and new features such as blogs, photo albums and polls, which would be too expensive for our clients to develop and host independently.”
For the past seven years, Prospero has developed its expertise and reputation as a community application provider for top Web sites. It signed on to provide such services to NASCAR.com two years ago, and also counts as customers the online bulletin board and chat operations of Major League Baseball, Fox, CBS, Nickelodeon, Warner Music and the Golf Channel.
“With our customers, we’re used to seeing spikes when there are controversies or breaking news,” Williams says. “We see significant spikes at the end of shows like American Idol. Prospero’s platform is designed to efficiently handle these traffic spikes. The platform has a distributed architecture, with caching and queuing to eliminate bottlenecks and dependencies. We’ve also built headroom into the overall platform that can be assigned on demand. As overall usage increases, we can easily add new servers to linearly increase capacity.”
Many NASCAR-related online properties are also looking to evolve within the next several years, creating more opportunities for Web hosts that can deliver greater connectivity, bandwidth and value-added services. Dover Motorsports (dovermotorsportsinc.com), which operates the site for Dover International Speedway in Delaware, wants to drive more ticket-purchasing traffic to its Web site, so fans can make these transactions online instead of by phone or by regular mail. The company has seen a 10 percent increase in online ticket sales since 2001, but it wants this to increase further. And it hopes developing a new hosting partnership will bring it added online performance.
“We have been working to consolidate hosting for all of our sites, while designing the new sites with a consistent look and feel to make them as modern as possible,” says Randy Dickerson, who, as art director at Dover, oversees the company’s online operations. (In the NASCAR world, many people wear many hats. The pit crew guys, for example, often work as mechanics and technicians in the team garages during the week.) “To improve our sites over the next two to four years, we look to continue to use more dynamic tools on our Web site. We plan to incorporate polls, fan surveys and interactive games to continue to drive traffic to the sites and learn more about our audience. We will use a content management system that allows us to manage the sites more efficiently. Once we migrate our site to our new hosting provider’s content management system, individual track personnel will be able to update the sites with their specific information without knowing any Web languages.”
Dover is also integrating its online subscriber newsletter database with its ticketing system, to learn more about customers.
“We can query our database and send specific messages to targeted groups,” Dickerson says. “We also work to grow our database and collect information about who our fans are, where they go, and what we can do improve their experience here at the track on race day.”
And the new hosting partners need to be ready to handle increased traffic volume. Last season, there were 2.3 million unique visitors to all Dover Motorsports Inc. Web sites, a major increase over the 500,000 who visited during the 2002 season. All of this translates to greater expectations for Dover Motorsports’ next host.
“From a Web host, we want an individual tech person to handle our account ? not just an 800 number where we are put in a queue,” Dickerson says. “We want a dedicated person to handle our account and needs. The hosting part of our relationship with our new host will take a back seat to expertise in information architecture, design and project management.”
Sponsors, of course, fuel NASCAR. And their sites tend to spike as well thanks to their association with stock car racing. NASCAR’s official lodging sponsor, Phoenix-based Best Western International, runs its site internally ? with some help from Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Akamai Technologies for both its main Web site bestwestern.com (bestwestern.com) and its racing site bestwesternracing.com (bestwesternracing.com). The latter online property has been in operation for a year, with a redesign in the spring of 2004. TV ads promoting special hotel offers in September 2004 resulted in a 98 percent traffic increase. The site has also run streaming video of behind-the-scenes action featuring driver Michael Waltrip, a Daytona champion. It also provides polling, trivia and other bits of user-friendly content to further increase traffic.
“We use the Akamai EdgePlatform to help improve performance on our site,” says Matt Clyde, director of e-customer contact for Best Western. “This helps because we are pushing heavy images and streaming video through their hardware. It caches locally for the user and does not require the download to come from Phoenix when they may live in New York, for example. It greatly improves download time. It’s also beneficial to Best Western from an architecture standpoint since we don’t have to maintain extra servers to handle that capacity year-round. We can pay for the service as needed, such as times when we’re running our NASCAR TV ads.”
The success of its online properties is a big victory for NASCAR, in large part because of its audience ? unfairly stigmatized as rubes, unfamiliar with the Internet. Quite the contrary, NASCARS fans have proven eager to accept the sport’s online offerings, and enthusiastic in their online shopping. No doubt, NASCAR’s online audience will grow this year, as the sport makes a major push to expand its audience, both in the US and abroad.
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