Insight: How IMSA's Growth in Digital Media is Driving the Series Forward
John Dagys explores how IMSA is helping lead the way in attracting new fans to sports car racing...
Less than five years ago, just coming out of the COVID pandemic, there were certain events on the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship schedule that simply struggled to attract fans. The overall demographic was aging and TV ratings were not showing any sizable growth.
It was a wake-up call for the sanctioning body, especially amid Formula 1’s meteoric rise thanks to Netflix’s ‘Drive to Survive’ series that turned that series into almost a household name in sports.
IMSA’s big chance began with the 2023 Rolex 24 at Daytona, the first race of its new GTP era, which saw many of the same specification top-class prototypes compete not only in the WeatherTech Championship but also FIA World Endurance Championship, in what was coined the start of a ‘Golden Era’ of sports car racing.
There was a visible increase in new and returning fans, but there was also work going on behind the scenes to elevate the series’ digital media presence, both from a social media and broadcast perspective.
While having enjoyed a successful partnership with NBC Sports since 2019, IMSA’s brand and marketing team looked for ways to fill the “white spaces” for further growth, and it’s done just that.
One of its most-documented ‘experiments’ came in 2024 when IMSA’s YouTube channel live-streamed the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring to international audiences. With no pre-event promotion, that race delivered 21,000 peak concurrent views and 505,000 total live views in what was essentially a trial run.
That year, its official YouTube channel started with 290,000 subscribers. Fast forward to today, and more than 1.74 million people subscribe to the channel, a number that surpasses not only IndyCar and the FIA World Endurance Championship but also NASCAR.
With original content such as ‘Win the Weekend presented by Michelin’ which is now in its fourth season, as well as exclusive trackside reports, IMSA’s ‘Endurance Hour’ podcast hosted by Matt Yocum (pictured above) and a plethora of archived footage of historic races, it’s become one of the fastest growing channels in motorsports.
But it’s not just been growth on YouTube. IMSA recently reached 4 million total followers across all of its social media platforms, marking a 208 percent increase since 2023 and considerable 500 percent increase in video consumption, from 98 to 595 million annual views.
According to Zoomph, a leading AI-powered sponsorship measurement and analytics platform, it has put IMSA’s social media value comparable to the New York Knicks NBA basketball team, with an estimated $38 million in social media value from last year alone.
So what’s driven this surge in digital media, particularly in the last 24 months? In speaking with IMSA President John Doonan and IMSA’s Head of Brand and Digital Strategy Doug O’Donnell, it hasn’t been one silver bullet but rather approaches through multiple avenues that has also resulted in record growth in fan attendance and a notably younger demographic.
O’Donnell, who joined IMSA in 2023 after stints with the Ironman Group and the San Antonio Spurs NBA team, admitted he and his team have been playing ‘catch up’ to some of the more established sports properties in digital media but have found creative ways to build the IMSA brand.
“If you look back, some of the larger brands, whether it’s F1, NASCAR, they were promoting [on digital media] ten years ago,” he tells Sportscar365. “So they’ve had a longer ramp. We’ve been catching up in a lot of respects.”
Doonan says the ‘Win the Weekend’ series, which now regularly gets 3 million views per episode, has been largely beneficial for attracting new fans to IMSA according to a market study conducted by Michelin.
“It identified hardcore fans but also a next outer-ring of people, ‘I like motorsports but I don’t even know what I-M-S-A is,’” he says. “The targeting for ‘Win the Weekend’ we all see it but it’s not necessarily aimed for the hardcore fans. It’s for those few outer layers.”
O’Donnell adds: “We were trying to find that broader market that was either interested in sports cars, generally, or car culture itself.”
The other key driving force has been fan engagement on its social media platforms, particularly YouTube, where it received 179,000 chats during this year’s Rolex 24 at Daytona.
IMSA also had an impromptu live stream of the night test session from January’s Roar Before the Rolex 24. That two-hour session, hosted by Yocum and IMSA Radio’s Ryan Myrehn, which was never previously broadcast, drew in more than 259,000 views, including 12,000 simultaneous live viewers at the time of the broadcast, which like the 2024 Sebring trial run, came with no pre-event promos.
Given the seismic growth of its digital properties, it begs the question if IMSA could make the successful switch to digital-only for its race broadcasts, similar to what F1 has done this year in ditching linear TV for an exclusive U.S. broadcast deal with Apple TV.
Both Doonan and O’Donnell stressed the importance of striking a balance, at least for now, given their longtime linear partner NBC Sports.
“There’s a couple of ways of looking at that,” says O’Donnell. “There’s a possibility that yes, we do stay in the model we’re in today. But we also want to continue to figure out where the white spaces for growth are. We know that we have continued opportunity.”
Doonan adds: “There’s no network that we can call that brings audience and is available to everyone, that would give you a 24-hour window, or a 12-hour or a ten-hour or even a six-hour.”
However, through NBC’s digital platforms, namely Peacock, fans are not only able to watch the full season of the WeatherTech Championship live, but also Michelin Pilot Challenge, VP Racing SportsCar Challenge as well as most of the IMSA-sanctioned single-make series as well.
This year, both 100-minute street races at Long Beach and Detroit are on network NBC, marking a continued increased of live free-to-air coverage, which Doonan said had a 11 percent boost in viewership in the crucial 18- to 34-year-old demographic last year.
IMSA has also been able to leverage other NBC sports properties, such as the NBA and Supercross, not only with tune-in reminders but also with in-broadcast segments. Jack Aitken and Alexander Sims attended a Detroit Pistons game, aired on NBC, to cross-promote the upcoming Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix, while Trent Hindman was at a Supercross event last month.
Its brand team has also been tailoring its digital content for each platform, given the wide range of demographics between some of the leading social media outlets.
“When we’re marketing and doing content on TikTok, the team is thinking about it a little bit differently on how we post it on TikTok vs. Facebook, because [they reach two different demographics],” says O’Donnell. “There’s a lot of nuances to that so we’re always trying to figure out what’s going to have impact but let’s not get caught in our own bubble of posting the same thing, the same way, everywhere.”
O’Donnell and Doonan say they’re also benchmarking their results not only with sister company NASCAR but within those in the entire IMSA paddock, equating it to a “rising tide lifts all boats” approach.
“There’s constant change on all these channels,” says O’Donnell. “The way they perform, the way the algorithms tighten over time. We’re always trying to stay on top of everything. If I see an anomaly on a trend, sometimes I’ll call a colleague at NASCAR and say, ‘Are you seeing this also?’ If they say yes, we know it’s the platform and it’s not us.”
Doonan adds: “At Daytona we had a meeting with all the teams, with their social/digital/PR folks. We race hard and try to win against each other, in this regard, I think it’s a matter of, ‘Here’s what the series is trying to accomplish. Here’s how you can collaborate or partner with us or how we can help you with our strategies.’
“If we can bring others up, then the whole thing is going to continue to be a solid platform.”
IMSA has also seen a marked increase in trackside attendance, with record crowds at all but one event last year, and new weekend attendance records achieved at both this year’s Rolex 24 (180,000) and Sebring (115,000).
Last year’s Motul Petit Le Mans at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta, which became the series’ first-ever ‘sold out’ event, after ticket sales stopped midway through the race, is undergoing renovations by adding 1,500 additional parking spaces and a new traffic corridor.
Doonan says they’re also reaching out through numerous initiatives, such as its STEM program, working with promoters to invite local school children to the track, well as its newly launched IMSA Labs program, to “capitalize” on the current high-mark of sports car racing globally.
Meanwhile, O’Donnell says there’s still more growth to come on the digital front. Remarkably, 70 percent of viewers to IMSA’s YouTube channel are not current subscribers. “That gives us an idea of how much growth is possible,” he says.
That bodes well entering the next few years, as IMSA, like nearly every form of motorsports, will have to navigate the current geopolitical challenges and automotive climate, which has seen multiple OEMs face significant write-downs on projected EV sales and subsequent reductions in motorsports spend.
Uncertainly looms on the exact number of GTP cars that will be on the WeatherTech Championship grid next year, following the ‘pausing’ of Acura’s program, and others such as Genesis, Ford and McLaren all currently prioritizing top-class involvement in the WEC.
However, given IMSA’s deep paddock filled with 18 automotive partners, as well as packed grids in nearly all of its single-make series, there promises to be no shortage of content.
“The beauty of where GT3 is, where GT4 and even TCR, the automakers have a business model where they’re selling cars, selling spares, selling trackside support,” says Doonan. “From that standpoint, it’s a business model that helps maintain the programs, both customer racing and if they have a factory endorsed effort in a pro category, it allows them to keep that momentum going too.”
If the right moves in the digital and social media world continue to be taken, there’s a strong chance IMSA could be one of the best-positioned motorsports properties for the long-term.
Photos: Mike Levitt & Jake Galstad