We’ve reached a point during the pandemic where some sporting events and leagues have been able to bring back their events without fans. That list includes: PBR, UFC, golf charity events and now, NASCAR. On Sunday, drivers started their engines for the first time in month and fans rejoiced. Since they couldn’t cheer on their favorite drivers in person, the fans started their keyboards instead. The team at Zoomph put our platform to use and analyzed the social conversation and rankings during the Real Heroes 500 and the Toyota 200.
Race Social Overview
We focused on five major categories on social metrics: organic posts, impressions, engagements, engagement rate, and social value.
| Organic Posts | Impressions | Engagements | Engagement Rate | Social Value | |
| Darlington (Sunday) | 42,100 | 146,214,226 | 709,970 | 0.49% | $1,903,004.00 |
These numbers for Sunday are very impressive especially when you use pre-pandemic NASCAR events as your baseline. When you combine the social metrics for the Penzoil 400 in Las Vegas, the Auto Club 400 in Fontana, and NASCAR Cup 2019 Phoenix, you still don’t reach the numbers that Darlington saw on Sunday alone.
NASCAR is a weekend event, with tailgating and multiple smaller events planned around the main one. With the current situation, NASCAR took advantage of not having anything to compete against (except The Masked Singer finale) and also ran at Darlington on Wednesday. This race had some memorable moments including Chase Elliot extending a one finger salute to Kyle Busch and a literal fox on the track. Moments like those are the ones that social media loves and personally, my Twitter feed was blowing up. While organic posts and impressions were lower than Sunday’s race, it was a very engaged audience and a chance for NASCAR to gain new fans who aren’t used to seeing cars speed around a track on a weekday.
| Organic Posts | Impressions | Engagements | Engagement Rate | Social Value | |
| Darlington (Wednesday) | 29,482 | 88,630 | 402,746 | 0.45 | $1,116,261.00 |
Driver Social Data
In addition to having a memorable interaction during Wednesday night’s race, Kyle Busch and Chase Elliott ranked #2 and #3 respectively in our driver social rankings. With their appearances in Victory Lane, Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin also made our top five.
Kyle Busch and his wife Samantha Busch combined for a social value of $225,890 during the races – now that’s what we call a power couple.
Top Influencers
Though Dale Earnhardt Jr. (@dalejr) no longer is in the physical driver’s seat, he still captures everyone’s attention on social media. With or without pants…maybe that’s why he held the number one spot in our top influencers for Darlington? We’re not ones to judge.
I don’t even think I put on pants Sunday. https://t.co/xy1eOBeOqQ
— Dale Earnhardt Jr. (@DaleJr) May 20, 2020
Rounding out the top five influencers during the return of NASCAR was Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente), Bob Pockrass (@bobpockrass), Jeff Gluck (@jeff_gluck), and parody account @nascarcasm. And because we love Flavortown so much, we wanted to give a little shout out to Guy Fieri for ranking in our top 25 influencers.
Top Brands
Perhaps more than any other sport, NASCAR is known for the plethora of sponsors they and individual drivers have. Zoomph used our social analytics tools to analyze the sponsors that received the most exposure on social media during #NASCARisBack.
Xfinity landed in the number one spot with 7,328 organic posts and a social value of $593,932. Kevin Harvick won on Sunday night to secure his 50th victory and his main sponsor, Busch Beer received $247,272 in social value during the two races. Wednesday night’s winner was FedEx driver Denny Hamlin and FedEx received $57,079 in social value.
