No National Magazine for the NASCAR Nation?

The sport is booming, sponsors are clamoring to get involved, television ratings are strong, and marketers would love to see a national mass-market print vehicle aimed at its surprisingly mainstream demographics. Yet during the past two years, only two NASCAR-themed magazines have entered the marketplace—one of which is dead and the other of which is close to getting put on the scrap heap.

“NASCAR is second in [television] audience only to the NFL, and when you look at demographics who express interest in NASCAR, they are much more upscale than most people expect them to be,” says Neil Ascher, executive vice president/director of communication services at Zenith Media. Recent Mediamark Research surveys show that about 42% of NASCAR fans earn at least $50,000 annually — the average U.S. wage reported last year was $36,210 – and its fans bought $2.1 billion in NASCAR-licensed product last year.

This was the audience Time Inc.’s Time4Media division was wooing when in March 2005 it unveiled “Racing Fan.” The monthly magazine featured splashy photos of car crashes and glossy profiles of drivers, their cars, and the weekly NASCAR races. Time4Media projected a circulation base of 250,000 readers and issued two pilot issues by midyear.

But the magazine has stalled, and many in the publishing and media industries doubt that it will return. Samara Mormar, a spokesperson for Time4Media, admits that the company has put the magazine under the equivalent of racing’s yellow caution flag but insists that the company was “thrilled” with the publication: “No final determination has been made. … We think we have a winning idea. We’re continuing to evaluate it,” she says.

The struggles of “Racing Fan” follow the August 2004 failure of the NASCAR-themed “American Thunder,” a lifestyle magazine fronted by a group of private investors. Publishers failed to return two phone calls seeking comment, but a source who worked on the publication’s business side says that while advertisers were enthusiastic, the magazine couldn’t find an audience.

Which may seem counterintuitive, given stock car racing’s impressive metrics. It is one of the few sports whose TV ratings have risen consistently since 2000, averaging a 4.9 in 2004, according to Nielsen Media Research. Its marquee event, February’s Daytona 500, has averaged over a 10 rating during the past five years, meaning that more than 11 million homes were tuned into the race. Moreover, its top drivers consistently score among the top 10 favorites among all sports in the annual ESPN Sports Poll. NASCAR says that 80 Fortune 500 companies are among its 1,132 sponsors.

Ava Seave, a principal at Quantum Media, which consults with media companies, compares NASCAR with bowling in noting the past print failures for that sport. “Part of it is … in NASCAR there is no service publication aspect of it,” she says. In comparison, widely read magazines as “Tennis,” and the half dozen golf periodicals on the market, which include stories about readers can improve their own game as well as articles on the pros.

Pete Spina, publisher of “Sporting News,” mainstream sports publications such as his already more than adequately cover the sport. The 713,000-circulation monthly devotes 250 edit pages a year to NASCAR as well as a handful of special issues it publishes in partnership with the group. He says the company made a conscious decision five years ago to begin blanket coverage of the sport. “The NASCAR fan is in many ways [similar] to the NFL fan in terns of demographics,” he says.

Seave and other media buyers consider publications such as Street & Smith’s weekly “NASCAR Scene,” (circulation 113,000) and monthly “NASCAR Illustrated” (90,000) as well as “Speedway Illustrated” (137,000, all according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation) to be niche publications, albeit profitable ones, because in total their readership doesn’t approach the level represented by the fan base. Seave says a specialty magazine should reach about 5%-10% of its base. Even if NASCAR’s own estimate that there are 75 million fans in the U.S. is wildly overstated, the sport should still be able to support a thriving mass-scale print publication.

In the absence of a one-stop print outlet for reaching a sizable portion of NASCAR fans simultaneously, marketers must make do with advertising in multiple niche publications or opting for other media. “Maybe the better outlet … is sponsorship rather than a magazine,” muses Zenith Media’s Ascher. “I certainly believe there is an opportunity.”