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Christine Stoffel-Moffet envisioned a different type of Nascar when she became the sport’s head of enterprise technology a year ago.
She wanted the sport’s partners, which already had a strong history of working together, to increase business-to-business relationships. But in order to do it, she wanted to come up with a unique program that no other sport offers.
“I developed the idea from the company I had been running for the last seven years,” Stoffel-Moffet, who ran Sports & Entertainment Alliance in Technology (SEAT).
Stoffel-Moffet founded SEAT and served as its CEO until last year, when she had an opportunity she couldn’t turn down from Nascar. Her relationships with tech CEOs, plus the ones Nascar already developed, combined for a core proud of 30 brands that seldom had an opportunity to work together.
So Stoffel-Moffet created a new Nascar-centered community for the tech industry called the Nascar Technology Partner Platform. To kick off the program, 28 technology companies attended the platform’s inaugural event at Daytona International Speedway during the Coke Zero Sugar 400 race weekend.
“It revolves around how we can leverage technology in the industry moving forward,” she said. “It evolved organically from what I built in a global platform and, now, I’m bringing something unique to Nascar.
“We were looking at different technologies and how to evolve our sport. We have to evolve the racing industry and take it to a whole new level of success.”
Last year, during the Covid-19 lockdown and the months after, Nascar began the process of handpicking brands that it believed could play a large role in the sport’s future.
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Existing partners Comcast, Verizon and Amazon Web Services topped the list, but new companies like HGC Technologies and Extreme Networks were also identified as possible companies that could align with Nascar.
“Our mission statement is to be looked upon as the most inspiring, future forward, innovative and technology-advanced organization across the sports-entertainment industry,” Stoffel-Moffet said. “The pandemic created opportunity if you look at the negative things in a positive way.”
At Daytona, the 28 tech companies were joined by 11 sports entertainment organizations. The program enabled Nascar to share ideas and listen to new ones from its partners about topics like ticketing, expanding at-track wifi and more.
Stoffel-Moffet’s team took the participants on a tour around Daytona, a 2.5-mile facility. They were shown what the elaborate fan experience is like at Nascar races, and it enabled them to quickly understand how each individual brand could play a part in Nascar’s future.
“It was an explosive opporunity,” Stoffel-Moffet said.
Nascar wants to create a community of sports entities with tech companies — both large and small — to bring the industry a new experience. The new program will help Nascar take more risks when it comes to developing new technology that different groups in the sport can use, whether it be teams, drivers, fans or television partners.
“We want to bring people together so we can collaborate,” she said. “We want to move the needle for sports.”
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