Daytona 500 date change likely if NFL moves Super Bowl to traditional 500 weekend
NASCAR Sprint Cup drivers compete in the Daytona 500 at Daytona International Speedway earlier this year. // Matthew Stockman, Getty Images
NASCAR and Daytona International Speedway could have a huge scheduling conflict on their hands.
How big?
Super Bowl big.
Since 1971, the Daytona 500 has been scheduled for the Sunday prior to the third Monday in February (Feb. 14-20), which has recently been two weeks following the National Football League’s Super Bowl.
But the date of the Super Bowl could change. NFL owners talked earlier this week about adding one or two weeks to their regular-season schedule, which, depending on the number of preseason games, could make the entire length of the season up to two weeks longer. That would result in the Super Bowl scheduled on the traditional date of the Daytona 500.
The NFL won’t change its schedule, most likely, until its 2011 season, meaning the first potential conflict wouldn’t come until 2012 at the earliest.
NASCAR and Fox Sports officials are in a wait-and-see mode before commenting on what NASCAR would do, but it seems likely that the date for the Daytona 500 would have to change.
“I don’t think I can make a definitive answer to [changing the date], but I would have a hard time today seeing how that would work for everybody – working for the media partners, working for the sponsors that we share and quite frankly, working for the fan and the consumer base,” said Roger VanDerSnick, senior vice president for marketing and business operations for DIS parent company International Speedway Corp.
“I understand the NASCAR base pretty well, and there’s a fair amount of overlap. So why make that an issue when I think we’ve got several options so that it wouldn’t be?”
There already have been discussions as far as what date in February would work, depending on what the NFL does.
“We have our charts and our spreadsheets, and we’re confident that we can come up with a solution that will work for everybody,” VanDerSnick said. “The good news is the NFL schedules, as I understand it, are tied into their collective bargaining agreements as well as their broadcast contracts. … The timeline is more urgent for them in terms of [finalizing a date], and we’ll just sync up with that.”
VanDerSnick said he would like the Daytona 500 to still kick off the NASCAR season, which it has since 1982.
“It’s the heritage, it’s one of the things that makes the sport unique, it’s what sets apart Daytona International Speedway,” VanDerSnick said. “The crown jewel of the NASCAR season is the Daytona 500, and, in fact, it starts the season off with a bang. It’s very important that we start off the season with the Daytona 500.”
If there were any thoughts of trying to run the Daytona 500 on the same day as the Super Bowl, NASCAR and ISC likely wouldn’t have a willing customer in one of their most important customers – Sprint.
Sprint’s two main sports sponsorships are the NFL and NASCAR.
“If we end up in a position where the two marquee events for both sports are the same day, then we’re going to have to start asking questions about are we able to extract the best possible value from both sponsorships,” said Steve Gaffney, Sprint’s director of sports and entertainment marketing. “We don’t know that it’s going to be the case – it’s [probably] three years down the road, so there’s a lot of things that have to happen.
“But it does get to a question because there are many of us who are partners of both sports, we’d have to say, ‘Can we extract that value that we expect … from both of these sports if their marquee event is exactly on the same day?’ ”
What is the early answer?
“I have a hard time believing that would be beneficial to a partner in both sports,” Gaffney said.
Sprint wouldn’t try to order NASCAR to move the date of the Daytona 500 to not conflict with the Super Bowl, but it would make its position known, Gaffney said.
“It would be a little bit presumptuous for any one of us to say that we have that type of [scheduling] influence on any of the properties,” Gaffney said. “What we can say is ‘We’re a partner; we are invested in the sport. We want what’s best for the sport and for the fans.’ And then that translates into what’s best for us.
“For us, it would be, ‘Listen, this is what we need. How you guys get there is ultimately your determination, but this is what we need.’ ”
The news out of the NFL meetings earlier this week was not surprising, VanDerSnick said.
“It’s been on our radar for about a year,” VanDerSnick said. “We’ve considered it and discussed it. At the end of the day, working in concert with NASCAR, we have some options, and we’re confident that we’ll get a solution.
“NASCAR controls the schedule. We’ll work with them to find the right things. It’s important for us to develop a best and most optimal schedule – both for Daytona, obviously because of the importance of that event, but also for the rest of ISC schedule because it could have some impacts. It’s going to be the best thing we have for our race fans and attendees, our sponsors and our media partners.”
