Tom Bryant (left) came to NASCAR after a 20-year career in the US Army (Photo: Courtesy Tom Bryant)
STAFFORD – Tom Bryant made his first trip to Stafford Motor Speedway over the weekend to take in two days of the track’s NAPA Auto Parts Spring Sizzler event.
Bryant, NASCAR’s newly named director of communications for touring and weekly racing, expects his next trip to the track will involve chaperoning executives from NBC so they can get a firsthand look at how key short track racing can be when they’re looking to fill airtime on shows like NASCAR America, which broadcasts daily on NBC Sports Network.
It’s part of numerous initiatives Bryant spoke about Sunday morning in Stafford.
Bryant, a 20-year US Army veteran, was named to his position with NASCAR in February. Before taking the job with NASCAR he had served as director of public relations for the U.S. Special Operations Command in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Bryant said he brings a passion for short track racing that was cultivated growing up around the short track racing scene in Alabama.
“I’ve been with this company for two months and I didn’t come to this job with any preconceived notions about it,” Bryant said. “But I’ve seen, from our senior executive level, a greater emphasis on weekly racing and touring racing and how we strengthen it. Clearly the economics in some places are a challenge, but I do know that our senior leaders care about doing things and looking at what we can do to help track operators and make it more economically viable for them to keep doing it.”
Bryant said NASCAR is looking at launching a special event weekend to bring a focus nationally to short track and regional racing next year for Easter weekend. He said with NASCAR’s big three series’ not running that weekend, it’s a time space that lends itself perfectly to showcasing grassroots competition.
Bryant said emphasis within the promotions and communications is keeping connected with NASCAR’s longtime core audience, but also creating the pipelines, through the use of technology, to connect to the next generations of fans.
“The youth movement, I think we’re in kind of a unique time period across all of our various series’ and tours where you see a lot of young racers making a pretty big splash on the track,” Bryant said. “I think that’s important for us. It’s important that we still reach [the newspaper] audience, that’s our core, but it’s important that we reach out to young folks.”
Bryant said the FansChoice.tv website, which launched earlier this season and has broadcast some local events, is a key to the advancement of grabbing the next generation. The NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour season opening Icebreaker 150, along with most of the other feature events of Icebreaker weekend at Thompson April 5-6, were broadcast on the FansChoice.tv.
“FansChoice.tv has been launched in a limited controlled fashion because we are sympathetic to the economics of it,” Bryant said. “The last thing we want to do is hurt the gate at Stafford or any other place. We’re trying to implement that in a balanced way that works for the track but also works for the fans. I think we’ve done that relatively intelligently at this point. … I really do believe that things like that, where fans can consume our product on their mobile devices is absolutely the future of where we’re going, and that’s how we have to reach those young folks.”
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