Infield Parking, the social network for NASCAR fans, emerged from Beta prior to the Daytona 500 race. I had a chat with CEO, Ed Sullivan, and he tells me that the site is growing even faster than expected.
One of the coolest features of the site is that it already has more than 10 drivers signed up and actively managing profiles. This may not come as a big surprise since legendary driver, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. is President and co-founder of the site. But anyone who knows the way trademarks and IP work in the entertainment world knows that it’s tough to get celebrities to do ANYTHING for free.
“We are offering drivers a share of the advertising revenue,” says Sullivan, “but it’s not the main reason most of them have joined. Once they see how nicely their Infield Parking profile pages compliment and help promote their own online fan clubs and Websites, the drivers want in.”
This year’s winner at Daytona, Kevin Harvick, seems to have jumped into Infield Parking with both feet. He’s blogging, uploading photos, and he’s offering cool collectibles (like the driving gloves he wore last year in the Brickyard 500) as prizes to fans who link to him as friends.
Sponsors are showing early interest in the site as well. While Infield Parking is using ABC Sports Regional Sports Sales group to peddle its banner inventory to advertisers, the site is making deals directly with racing team sponsors.
Dale Earnhardt Inc. signed an agreement with Sharpie
The first time associate sponsorship will feature Dale Earnhardt Jr. driving the #8 Sharpie car in the Sharpie MINI 300, the Busch series race at Bristol Motor Speedway in March. In celebration of the partnership, a line of “#8″ Sharpie markers also will debut in stores nationwide in April. Dale Jr. will also lend a hand to Sharpie’s Autographs for Action program, a national cause-related marketing platform benefiting charities with $1 million in both funds and supplies.
Sullivan says that Sharpied will leverage Infield Parking for all of its sponsorship activation. So when you see Sharpie working the infield at races this year, you can bet they’ll be “driving” fans back to their profile page inside the social network.
Sullivan discusses his learnings so far
“The biggest surprise,” says Sullivan, “is that we’re growing really fast without any advertising. Word of mouth has driven all adoption so far. So that’s really exciting.”
Sullivan says he is looking forward to this first season out of the gates, but he knows it won’t be easy. NASCAR.COM has already promised to release its own social networking system. But Sullivan remains confident, and he expects to work hand in hand with ESPN when the network televises races later this year.
Site Moderation proves challenging
“We have had some fans using some bad language and posting some questionable photos, but we’re taking steps to educate everyone on the rules of the site, and we’re working with a 3rd party to make sure we keep Infield Parking as family friendly as possible. ”
Infield parking will also rely on word filters and fans themeselves to report abuse of usage policies. They will employ a 3 strike policy. The third time a fan violates the usage rules, they get banned from the site.
How will fans use multiple sports networks?
It was a lot of fun talking to Ed and I look forward to collaborating with him as we bring our social networking site live. We talked about swapping profile pages inside our sites. The Colts will do a page inside Infield Parking, and they’ll do one inside MyColts. Who knows, maybe we can get drivers like Indiana native Tony Stewart, to show their Colts pride with profile pages inside MyColts - which of course would link to their pages inside Infield Parking.
“…We talked about swapping profile pages inside our sites. The Colts will do a page inside Infield Parking, and they’ll do one inside MyColts. Who knows, maybe we can get drivers like Indiana native Tony Stewart, to show their Colts pride with profile pages inside MyColts…”
BRILLIANT…I think this is where it is all heading.
I like this. There is a nice overlap of fan base b/t Nascar and Football so I believe there are synergies you can leverage in this environment just as you described.
“One of the coolest features of the site is that it already has more than 10 drivers signed up and actively managing profiles.”
I don’t get it. This isn’t a feature. A feature would be something unique that the user can’t get anywhere else. What makes the racer creating a profile at infield parking better than creating it at myspace? There is no added value to the user. All of the added value is to the new networking site and possibly the driver if they are going to share ad revenue.
It seems to me that Infield Parking is missing the point. Shouldn’t Dale Jrs. profile give me unique or at least focused info about him? Breaking news, stats, or schedule maybe? How about what has been going on in the garage this week?
Adding some of this extra info would be a start, but it still doesn’t make it “social”? What interaction can the users have with one another that they couldn’t have at myspace? What is unique that they can share aside from a very specific love for a person or thing? Look at Last.fm, Shelfari, or Listal as examples of social networking sites that are attempting to bring something unique to the table.
If you don’t have an original take on social networking, you are just fragmenting the market. This could prove to be great from a focused advertising standpoint if the users show up, but what peaks the interests of those who are not rabid fans and what keeps them coming back?
Hi R Mitchell
The entry does say … ”This year’s winner at Daytona, Kevin Harvick, seems to have jumped into Infield Parking with both feet. He’s blogging, uploading photos, and he’s offering cool collectibles (like the driving gloves he wore last year in the Brickyard 500) as prizes to fans who link to him as friends.’
Highlighting exactly what you are looking for in a niche social networking site - and it’s this type of personal driver interaction that is bringing the NASCAR fans to this site rather than any other - a unique offering.
Keep up the challenges, as with all Web 2.0 activities it is about continuous development and this site will constantly improve.
[...] Our thanks to Pat Coyle and his positive endorsement of http://www.infieldparking.com. In his recent blog (26th Feb 2006) he highlights some of the special attributes of this great niche networking site - bringing fans ‘pc to pc’ with drivers where they can interact and converse via blogs and forums with each other. [...]
It will be interesting to see what happens to Infieldparking.com when NASCAR.com release its own social networking site. Who will win out? Can one provide something over the other? I’ll be watching to see.
[...] On Pat Coyle’s site he has a nice blog post on Infieldparking.com, a new social-networking Web site designed for NASCAR’s fans. With the social networking phenomenon MySpace many want a piece of the social-networking pie and this includes the Sports industry. I know many NFL teams are looking into building social-networking sites, but I ask what will we consider a success? 50,000 active users or 1,500 active users. On the Chargers message boards we have over 22,000 registered user but only 2000 active users during the season. I view it a great success because the forum software cost me under $200 and my hosting cost are relatively cheap. These forums create a lot of content but would 1500 active users make it worth the cost of developing social-networking site for a team site? [...]
[...] Yesterday I posted about Infield Parking, a recently launched social networking platform for NASCAR fans. I got a lot of comments and E mails from readers who expressed many opinions. [...]