RACER.COM’S AMAZING ENGAGED AUDIENCE GROWTH IN AUGUST UNDERSCORES INDYCAR’S RESURGENCE
By Paul Pfanner, co-founder/CEO Racer Media & Marketing, Inc.
The 2019 NTT IndyCar Series season is now in the record books following a historic run by Team Penske that saw Josef Newgarden claim his second title and Simon Pagenaud win the 103rd running of the Indianapolis 500. From the start, IndyCar has been the favorite series of the RACER audience, so let’s take a look at the remarkable audience growth and engagement the series has helped generate last month on our RACER digital platforms.
As we’ve previously shared, the month of May 2019 driven by the audience energy surrounding the Indy 500 set new records for RACER by engaging 1,072,005 users across all of our digital platforms.
We are now pleased to report that August 2019’s metrics eclipsed that milestone with the results shown below.
RACER.com users (Alexa certified): 611,398
RACER Apple News Unique Viewers: 111,171
RACER Facebook Engaged Users: 351,608
RACER Twitter Engagements: 68,747
RACER Channel YouTube Unique Viewers: 72,400
RACER Instagram Engagements: 3,331
RACER Total Engaged Digital Audience in August: 1,218,655
Equally noteworthy in August was our audience’s direct engagement with RACER’s market-leading IndyCar content generated by our esteemed reporters Robin Miller and Marshall Pruett. The metrics below underscore the surging RACER audience passion for IndyCar and their devotion to our coverage during August.
Social shares from RACER.com IndyCar story pages: 167,783
Comments on RACER.com IndyCar story pages: 5,811
RACER IndyCar Facebook post engaged users: 167,472
RACER IndyCar Facebook post likes: 23,030
RACER IndyCar Facebook post comments: 3498
RACER IndyCar Twitter post engagements: 43,549
RACER IndyCar Twitter post link clicks: 31,091
RACER IndyCar Twitter post likes: 5342
But wait, there’s more! With the NTT IndyCar Series title battle coming down to the final race of the season last weekend at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca, the momentum continued into September. Through the first 23 days of this month Google Analytics reports that RACER.com’s unique users are up an astonishing 75.89% over the same 23 days in September 2018 and our new users skyrocketed by 90.52%. It is also important to point out that 91.03% of the RACER.com’s overall user audience in September originated from the USA, delivering a stellar 83.61% growth in our American users. An exclamation point to this record growth is the fact that Canada also saw a 26.36% increase users over September 2018, representing 3.98% of our total audience, and bringing our combined North American users to 95.01%.
When digesting these remarkable overall RACER.com growth metrics, it is reasonable to expect that this expansion of our user audience came from older, traditional racing fans re-engaging in the sport. While partially true, it is very encouraging that every RACER.com audience age group — young and old — is up massively this month.
Everyone in motorsports is seeking a younger audience, and we are particularly pleased to share that our users under 44 years of age increased by 84.91% in September 2019 vs September 2018 and now represents 35.20% of our users. It is also worth mentioning that RACER.com’s combined September 2019 users under 54 years of age has risen by 71.50% over 2018 and accounts for 59.44% of our total audience.
Clearly both IndyCar and RACER have been making the right moves to build momentum while attracting both new and lapsed fans to the sport. But IndyCar isn’t the only category where we are seeing impressive growth and engagement. NASCAR, Formula 1, IMSA, SRO America, Trans Am, SCCA, WEC, Formula E, vintage/historic racing and off-road racing are also experiencing exceptional engagement and audience expansion on our platforms. As the season winds down we will continue to provide more insights on each category for the year.
In the meantime, we are in the process of compiling our RACER 2019 audience survey responses, and the results we’ve reviewed so far have been encouraging on every level. We will share this data with you in the coming weeks, but from what we’ve seen already, there is no more engaged and influential audience in North American motorsports. Their passion burns brightly, and is both infectious and inspiring. All of us at RACER will never forget that we work for them and for the betterment of our sport.
If you would like to learn more about RACER and the reasons behind our brand’s growth, influence and engagement, please contact your RACER representative listed below:
Paul Pfanner, CEO/Exec. Publisher / paul.pfanner@racer.com / 949.417.6711
Bruce Kukuk, VP/Associate Publisher / bruce@racer.com / 949.417.6720
Nicole Szawlowski, Advertising Director / nicole@racer.com / 949.417.6722
Raelyn Stokes, Business Development / raelyn@racer.com / 949.417.6705
Rick Bisbee, Sales Director / rick@vintagemotorsport.com / 312.285.8720
Debi Brand, Sales Director / debi@vintagemotorsport.com / 312.430.4890