How AI is simplifying race day and speeding development at NASCAR

NASCAR aficionados now have more ways to follow live races beyond simply watching them on television. Premium subscribers to official NASCAR apps receive live data, such as telemetry feeds from race cars and driver audio communications, during races. Initially, ensuring these data elements functioned smoothly required significant manual effort.

One oversight, like a muted driver audio feed, could disappoint fans. NASCAR's three-day race weekends often necessitated hundreds of such tasks, constantly updating fans on aspects like car positions and services received during pit stops. Tim Clark, NASCAR's executive vice president and chief brand officer, explains, "There are hundreds of points of data that's coming off of each of the cars that manifest onto this live leaderboard product."

NASCAR's collaboration with the sports tech company Next League has simplified the process of delivering this data to fans. AI tools have automated approximately 90% of the work, according to NASCAR and Next League. David Nugent, Next League's co-founder and CEO, notes that manual control of these tasks is no longer necessary due to automation.

AI automation has also aided in other digital projects, enhancing targeted advertising delivery to fans, which has a click-through rate of about 2%, 10 times higher than traditional NASCAR house ads. Future upgrades may include personalized fantasy products or features that highlight elements of audio broadcasts and transcripts.

However, Clark emphasizes that AI is not replacing human labor. People remain involved to ensure race weekends run smoothly, allowing them to focus on higher-level tasks and deliver more data to fans. NASCAR's use of AI for generating a Spanish-language audio feed from an English radio broadcast for its inaugural Cup Series event in Mexico is an exception.

While the audio quality was satisfactory, NASCAR likely won't repeat this AI-generated task, preferring to hire a Spanish-speaking broadcaster for future events. AI also helps in generating quick working prototypes of potential products and features, allowing NASCAR to test new concepts based on actual data rather than abstract ideas or static illustrations.

As AI frees up time previously spent on maintaining existing feeds, NASCAR can now focus on figuring out the best ways to deliver all this data to fans in an easily understandable manner.