{"id":443475,"date":"2026-01-30T17:57:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T17:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/443475\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T17:57:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T17:57:09","slug":"the-cw-to-reposition-nascar-series-with-new-brand-spot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/443475\/","title":{"rendered":"The CW to reposition NASCAR series with new brand spot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-marketing-and-sponsorship \">The CW will start running a new ad for the 2026 NASCAR season that aims to reposition <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2025\/08\/17\/sources-oreilly-auto-parts-in-line-to-replace-xfinity-as-nascars-second-series-title-sponsor\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2025\/08\/17\/sources-oreilly-auto-parts-in-line-to-replace-xfinity-as-nascars-second-series-title-sponsor\/\">the newly renamed O\u2019Reilly Auto Parts Series<\/a> from being only touted as a developmental league and emphasizes its increasing popularity. Called \u201cPure. Raw. Racing,\u201d the spot will begin with a paid ad campaign on Sunday in an effort to shift away from the series\u2019 prior motto during the Xfinity Series era, \u201cNames are made here,\u201d according to Chris Spadaccini, CMO of The CW.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-marketing-and-sponsorship \">The series does have a developmental aspect as the second rung on the ladder of NASCAR\u2019s national circuits. But as The CW heads into its second year of covering the sport, Spadaccini said the network doesn\u2019t view the series as a secondary product and that company executives have come to observe that it\u2019s about more than just rising stars. That\u2019s because the series is also filled with grizzled veterans and other quirky characters who aren\u2019t in the top-flight Cup Series anymore or who never made it. While viewership in the Cup Series decreased last year as broadcasts were split between four different media companies, including digital streaming with Prime Video, the O\u2019Reilly Auto Parts Series viewership went up with every race on the same linear TV channel.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-marketing-and-sponsorship \">\u201cThe new entitlement partner O\u2019Reilly gave us an opportunity to reintroduce the series to the NASCAR community from certainly a brand awareness standpoint, but our main focus is shifting brand perceptions and trying to change the conversation around the series,\u201d Spadaccini said. \u201cThat all starts with telling a better story about who we are, how we\u2019re different from Cup and drawing a clear line in the sand between the two series. And historically, NASCAR has always positioned this series around the next generation of stars.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-marketing-and-sponsorship \">\u201cFrom what we\u2019ve observed, this series is so much more than a developmental league,\u201d he added, \u201cand we\u2019ve heard it from fans themselves that the racing on Saturday is just as good if not more thrilling than what happens on Sunday. So that\u2019s the starting point and the way we see things. &#8230; Just positioning the series purely as a developmental league or calling it NASCAR\u2019s secondary series doesn\u2019t do it justice.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-marketing-and-sponsorship \">Spadaccini said NASCAR \u201chas been incredibly supportive\u201d to The CW\u2019s marketing efforts and that The CW understands that the Cup Series \u201cis the flagship and that is the prestige brand of NASCAR, hundred percent.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-marketing-and-sponsorship \">\u201cWhat we\u2019re trying to do is elevate the O\u2019Reilly Auto Parts Series to something that is its own thing and equally exciting to racing fans overall,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-marketing-and-sponsorship \">The CW mainly shot the spot at the Phoenix championship weekend last November and included some scenes from prior seasons. The network brought two videographers to the track. One had experience in NASCAR; the other didn\u2019t have any experience in racing but brought a \u201cfresh perspective\u201d as a documentary and street photographer from Serbia, according to Spadaccini. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-marketing-and-sponsorship \">The CW is supporting the brand campaign with paid advertising inventory for two weeks from Feb. 1 through the Daytona weekend that targets NASCAR Cup viewers across TV, connected TV and social media. It also will be distributed by Nexstar Media Group\u2019s affiliates across the U.S.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-marketing-and-sponsorship \">The network is also changing its experiential marketing at NASCAR races, going from a branded area and tour bus at a handful of races to The CW sports bar at 20 races. It will be a fully functioning bar, and The CW is working with Wasserman, which works with NASCAR\u2019s broader midway experience, to become part of that footprint.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-marketing-and-sponsorship \">\u201cI\u2019m not looking at this as a zero-sum game where we\u2019re stealing viewers from Cup or competing with Cup,\u201d Spadaccini said. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to grow the pie and that starts with trying to get O\u2019Reilly viewers to watch more frequently, but it also really is targeted to try to get more Cup fans invested in the series.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The CW will start running a new ad for the 2026 NASCAR season that aims to reposition the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443476,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,12716,634,82],"class_list":["post-443475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-motorsports","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443475\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}