Joe Buck's new ESPN deal, "GameDay" gets political, and Ben Kennedy joins the show

0:00Coming up on the pod, Joe Buck is back at ESPN. What could that mean for Troy Aikman? College game day gets political and NASCAR's Ben Kennedy joins the show.

0:18Welcome in to the SBJ Sports Media Podcast. I'm Austin Karp. Before we get started, Josh, I'm not going to be singing Rocky Top, but I am going to give you a hearty congratulations for your Tennessee volunteers just whooping up on my Georgia Tech yellow jackets. Yeah, there were a few minutes in the game on Saturday night when I felt like it was maybe in doubt, but, you know, eventually kind of ran away to that 21-point win. At Bobby Dodd Stadium, I wasn't there, but very cool atmosphere, very cool to see. It kind of felt like the opening to college football for me, at least. That's how we roll on the flats, Josh.

0:48But I think your win is also going to be a big win for me because we're going to Max Speed Shop for some barbecue here in short, North Carolina. If anyone's ever in town, check out that spot. They have a good one on South Boulevard, not far from Uptown. But Max is going to be the big winner here. Some of our listeners may know I'm a bit of a barbecue snob. Haven't been to Max in years. You said it. So, yeah, I'm proud to be a barbecue snob. So I'm excited to get over there and check it out. Austin, enough talk about barbecue and about Tennessee whooping Georgia Tech. Let's go into some sports media.

1:17Let's talk about ESPN, the big news of the week, re-signing Joe Buck to a six-year contract worth around$108 million. What's the big takeaway from Joe Buck being back at ESPN? Well, it's huge. I mean, he was one of those many free agents that were going to be coming up after the season. I don't think it's much of a surprise that he is re-signing though with ESPN. He had kind of telegraphed this in his conversation a couple of months ago with Richard Deitch, said he looks forward to staying there, but they got a deal done. This is a big number. The big thing to watch now is what happens with his partner, Troy Aikman, who has a big deal, probably wants to be making well above Tony Romo money and probably closer to what Tom Brady is doing with Fox, what that deal looks like.

2:00Is Aikman worth what Brady is getting in his personal services contract with Fox? Obviously, it goes beyond the booth. He does a lot of stuff for Fox corporate with Lachlan Murdoch. I don't know that ESPN is going to want to spend that kind of money. If Tony Romo is not coming back to CBS and if J.J. Watt is not the answer. Could Troy Aikman be the answer? Would they separate at this point in their careers? Is this a situation where, hey, we're really, really, really good friends, but maybe we just kind of do our separate thing here. We're still going to be friends, but maybe Aikman ends up at CBS.

2:29I'm sure they would love to have him. Maybe they can get a couple more Cowboys games out of that. They have the Super Bowl coming up. Aikman would go right into that booth. A lot of credibility there. We already know. We saw what UFC, David Ellison, has really wanted to make a splash with sports and what it can do for Paramount Skydance going into the future. Yeah, maybe so, Austin. I think that would just be, for me, that would be very strange. To me, when I think of Joe Buck, I think of Troy Aikman, I think of Aikman, I think of Buck. I mean, those two, I don't know how long they've been together, at least for the last 20 years, but I can remember at least as long as I can.

3:00I always thought Greeny and Golick. I never thought that they'd separate, but there's an example where they both went on to do separate things. Greeny and Golick were the two names that I thought of when I thought of. If Aikman and Buck were to go their separate ways, that was the first duo that I thought of. And it just, to me, those two have not felt right since they separated. And I feel it would be the same case with Buckethead. Another important thing to hear to remember with Joe Buck's extension, and we've talked about it here on this podcast, is Jimmy Pataro and ESPN's potential interest in the World Series.

3:29getting that as a property, those rights up with Fox and the rest of the MLB deals after the 2028 season. So nothing yet to report on where that's going to be going. But Jimmy Pataro, huge baseball fan. Would he be interested in getting back in the World Series? And would Joe Buck be part of that pitch to Major League Baseball? Like, hey, we have somebody in the fold that could easily call that if they want that. Joe Buck's going to be there for another six years. Also gives them that 2030 30 Super Bowl. This one he's already under contract for this season, but at least one more Super Bowl for Joe Buck.

4:00It's been strange for me not having Joe Buck call the World Series. We know that he was calling the World Series back to when he was 30 years old, right? To me, that would make all the sense in the world if ESPN were to go after those World Series rights to have Joe Buck on the call there. Austin, any other big takeaways from week one of the NFL? You had some numbers around NBC, around Fox, around CBS. There was a lot of discussion and discourse coming into this season about what their numbers would look like. What did they look like in week one? Well, I think the NFL was preparing a lot of folks in the industry for, you know, a drop in numbers.

4:30This is obviously going to be big data versus big data for the first time in the NFL. Yes, there were some improvements with co-viewing. We had Paul Ballou, the chief data and analytics officer from the NFL, come on this podcast and talk about. They're not necessarily happy with what all that means. I'm going to call it kind of, you know, mixed results. I hate saying mixed bag, Josh. That's kind of what we saw in week one. NBC had Giants-Cowboys into the first Sunday Night Football game. Saw an uptick for that one. But they were kind of down significantly for that kickoff. That was on a Wednesday night.

4:58You know, didn't really have a really great matchup there with Patriots and Seahawks. Not the biggest draw. But it was good to see Giants and Cowboys drawing that sort of number. Because last season, those teams were not good. Both of those NFC and East matchups, those are huge normally, were both in regional windows or Fox. Getting that matchup back into more prominence, probably going to be in a Fox national window later this season. One of the other takeaways for me is that Netflix audience of around 18.5 million viewers for the Thursday night game that they had in week one. That was 49ers and Rams, that debut game from Australia.

5:29Same exact audience that YouTube drew for the Brazil game in week one last year, albeit a Friday night game there for YouTube. But both of these games, I remember talking to some sources last year, and they said that that YouTube number was kind of below expectations. They thought it should easily clear$20 million, and I think that a prime time game like this, a standalone window, should clear$20 million for the NFL, especially with the way the big data is trending. So I have to think that it's a little below expectations for both Netflix this year, YouTube last year, in terms of not clearing$20 million.

5:59Is that a sign of maybe the appetite for some of these standalone streaming games? I'm personally, I think it's one for me to criticize the NFL for getting over its skis a little bit, but having all of these different standalone games, it just becomes a little bit much to like, you used to get excited when there was one standalone game here and there, you would absolutely tune into that. But now that there are so many, and that so many of them seem in my mind to be a little bit gimmicky, we're playing at 1030 in the morning in Australia. I know you want to expand the global reach, but to me, it's just like, I'm not as excited about tuning in as that as I normally would.

6:32I think for the streamers, especially non-prime video platforms that don't have a complete package, they still need this to drum up something new that they're continuing to try to build, and that's their ad tiers, their advertising tiers. Netflix has really tried to draw viewers in. They can bring advertisers in for these sorts of approaches, five games this season. YouTube Premium also trying to drum up viewership there. They don't have NFL this season, but it doesn't mean they're not going to potentially be involved with the NFL and other sports to try to drum up that sort of service in the future.

7:02And one more takeaway from week one, Josh, is this battle that I think we're going to continue to see in the Sunday national window between Fox and CBS. CBS has now led for around three straight seasons. I think it was like 14 seasons in a row before that for Fox. You saw Fox lead in the national window numbers this season. They had the better game in the national window, but that doubleheader, that win went to CBS. Why? Because CBS had a really good Texans-Bills game in the regional window. Around 72 % of markets caught that game. It was a close game. Big matchup, Josh Allen, so CBS benefiting from a much bigger regional number to take the doubleheader.

7:37But watch for that 425 window, the battle all season. Can Fox take the crown back from CBS? You mentioned Josh Allen, the Bills, and we have the debut of Thursday Night Football this week on Prime Video opening up Highmark Stadium against the Lions. Any big expectations there on Prime Video on Thursday night? Prime has settled into a good spot with Thursday night football. It's not quite yet what those broadcast TV networks were drawing when it had Thursday night football, but it's right there. It's right on the cuff, and it's going to be there eventually. People have found that they know Thursday night football is on Prime Video, and the NFL has started to respect Prime Video a little more in its schedule.

8:14Let's look at this game. It's the opener for a new Bills stadium, a marquee matchup here in Week 2. They got that game. You know somebody like Jim Nance wanted that for CBS. We would have loved to have called the Bills and Josh Allen. So that was a disappointment, I think, for CBS not getting that game. It went to prime video. So NFL showing that they totally respect what Amazon is bringing to the table. Josh, you also had a piece about Red Zone and its ad load for week one. What did you see from watching that on Sunday? We all know last season the NFL debuted those side-by-side commercials during NFL Red Zone.

8:48A lot of hand-wringing, a lot of Hellfire and Bremstone over adding commercials to a paid product. Personally, on my end, I didn't think it was that big of a deal. I mean, last year was two minutes of commercials over seven hours of football. It's not that intrusive. They do a good job of working in those commercials during replays so you're not actually missing live game action. So I was curious to see what they would do heading into this year. Scott Hanson had made some comments that they would cut back the ad votes. I was curious to see only one minute total of those side-by-side commercials throughout, again, six plus hours of football on Sunday.

9:23To me, it's not intrusive at all. Again, same situation. Yes, you have a commercial playing with audio. It's a 15-second commercial. It plays, again, during a replay, or they might try and roll in a commercial while they're showing scores in the other box. They do have some of those other graphic banner ads that they would roll out, you know, from time to time. I think there were seven or eight of those throughout the day on Sunday. But again, another way for the NFL, for ESPN to kind of monetize that Red Zone channel. I think what I'll be watching for the rest of the season is just, do they go by that same clay book the rest of the year?

9:56Do they have some new partners come in? You know, last year, DraftKings was the main sponsor around NFL Red Zone. Now it's Chase Bank. Is that for the entire season? Saw some other new brands come in this year. Burger King was a new one. Lowe's was, again, a very heavy advertiser on Red Zone. So we'll be certainly watching the rest of the season to see how Red Zone plays out from a purely, you know, enjoyment perspective, that's the only way to watch NFL football. During the main Sunday one o 'clock to seven o 'clock window, that's the only way to watch it. It seems almost archaic to go back and just turn on one game and then just watch that game and then sit there during the commercials.

10:31Certainly you do that for, you know, standalone games, Sunday night football, Monday night football, but just during the main window on Sunday, there's no other way to watch the NFL than Red Zone. The only thing I'll say about that is I have been watching NFL Red Zone since it first started on DirecTV with Andrew Siciliano. I loved it since the start. And I watched some of those early weeks last year for Red Zone. It did not bother me at all, the introduction of some more ads there. Even if you added a couple more, it would really bother me much. It's that good of a product. And I'm going to continue to watch.

10:58I think a lot of the complaining online is just because people like to complain on social media. Believe it or not, call me shop, Josh. Austin, let's go away from the NFL. Let's go to college football at ESPN, or should I say Fox News. We're seeing that College Game Day got a little bit political this past weekend. Ted Cruz going on Game Day to speak about the Protect College Sports Act. Do you think we'll see more of that in the weeks and days ahead on ESPN College Game Day? I don't think so. I don't think you'll continue to hear some talk about it, but I think it'll come from the talking heads that are already on the show.

11:27If Pat McAfee and Nick Saban, you know, who are a staple of the show, they're on the show every week, if that's something that they want to talk about, okay, fine. But it was a self-inflicted wound, bringing on Ted Cruz. Why? I just don't see the benefit. One of the hallmarks of Jimmy Pataro's reign at the head of ESPN is that he has gotten away from so much of that politicization that had gone on before his tenure. He had resurrected or improved, mended, whatever you want to call it, that relationship with the NFL. I don't see the benefit of bringing on Ted Cruz in this situation. And you saw them immediately have to give, it's not an equal airtime thing because Ted Cruz isn't running for office at this point.

12:07But they wanted to bring on somebody to give the opposing side, and they brought on the head of the NAACP, gave him some time on a 6 p.m. sports center this week. But let's be honest, getting 2.7, 2.8 million viewers watching game day is different than the 400 ,000 viewers or so that are watching a 6 p.m. sports center. Not an apples-to-apples spot. And I believe it overshadowed some of the really great production elements that they had on this particular game day. A lot of it around 9-11 and the 25th anniversary. You had that feature on the Red Bandana game with Boston College. You had that kid hitting the kick for$1.2 million.

12:43I think it overshadowed some of the great stuff that people go to college game day for. This is not CNN. It's not MSNBC. It's not Fox News like you kind of alluded to at the beginning. Just give me the football. Let's talk about that. I know that the Protect College Sports Act is a huge thing going on right now, but I'm not sure that that's why people are coming to game day. I'm absolutely in the same boat. Like this is a political issue, but I think if people want to be informed on that sort of thing, they can find out for themselves. I don't wake up on a Saturday morning and want to tune in and see that on a holiday game day.

13:11Personally, like you've got maybe the game of the year between Texas and Ohio State or one of the games of the year. We got a big one coming up this week at Ole Miss and LSU. But having a game of that stature, that's just not something I want to hear about. Again, you mentioned that was all the coverage coming out of the game was like, wow, like ESPN is bringing on Ted Cruz to talk politics during college game day for 10 minutes. That's crazy. That was a head-scratcher. I don't know. I think they have to just be careful with that. I mean, you've already seen a lot of discourse around, like, is McAfee too much?

13:38Is there too much of this and that? Like, then you bring in another layer of talk of politics. Could have been a point, at least the whole point. Yeah, for sure. All right, Austin, speaking of college football, who won week two? Who won the weekend for you this past weekend? You know, I'm giving it to Michigan football and Fox, and here's why. With Michigan's win over Oklahoma after that, we'll call it a debacle in week one against Western Michigan in terms of them as the draw. I think Fox Sports needs as many big draws at the Big Ten to stay competitive as possible. Yeah, of course. Michigan reinserted themselves into the conversation knocking off Oklahoma here.

14:12So you got Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State, Indiana, you can put on that big noon Saturday window. And after that, though, the Big Ten's kind of lacking in terms of TV draws. It doesn't have the depth that SEC does in terms of draws. I don't know if USC, Oregon, or they're not bringing in those numbers. And Oregon, especially after that lost Oklahoma State, kind of, you know, not really making it happen. And you really fall off a map there in terms of draws there. I don't think UCLA football is really bringing the numbers for the big noon Saturday window. So having Michigan stay in the conversation, stay relevant, serves to be a win there in what Fox is going to be able to put in the big noon Saturday window.

14:46And they need it because look at this weekend. You got Ohio State playing Little Sisters of the Poor. So where are they doing with the big noon kickoff pregame show? That's over in Wembley. And they're going to highlight that big 12 matchup, Arizona State and Kansas that is going to be on FS1, not even going to be in the big noon Saturday window. So they want to promote and continue to have big games in Michigan winning a last minute. What do you think? Who's your winner of the weekend? My winner of the weekend, not to go back to the Georgia Tech-Tennessee game again, but you know, Austin, I'm an SEC guy.

15:14I tend to watch more of the SEC than the ACC. And so Saturday night was my first exposure to this ACC video review where they really take you kind of under the hood. They show you all the ins and outs. of what goes into a video review on college football. A lot of discourse, obviously, in week one, Big Ten, you mentioned Michigan and Western Michigan, kind of that final play, not really knowing the difference between the in-stadium clock and the actual clock that's keeping time. To me, on Saturday night, there was only one occurrence during the Tennessee-Georgia Tech game, but it was great to just see under the hood all that goes into this.

15:48I mean, it's not just one guy who's on the phone with the referee. I mean, there are multiple voices speaking, and it's very fast-paced. It's not like it's just a slow, like one guy looking at one camera and saying, here's this very meticulous process. So I love that the ACC does that. I think it gives so much to the fan. It's probably pretty easy to pull off in my mind. And so to me, my next step is, I don't know why other leagues don't go forward and do this. Why don't you see this on the, like, what's the reasoning for not doing it? I think it just adds another layer. It adds for the fans from an interest standpoint.

16:18It gives to me the conferences more integrity and how they're doing this. because if you're not showing us, there's always going to be these fans, these viewers who are saying, well, why aren't you showing us? If the ACC can do it, why can't the SEC do it? Why is the SEC doing it? What's there to hide? So that was who won the weekend for me. I love that aspect of the broadcast. Thought it brought a lot of value to the broadcast and would love to see other networks, other conferences get in on that. What can I say, Josh? ACC, it just means more. But we talked about it on this podcast with Jim Phillips about the expansion that we're doing this season around that.

16:49I was just able to get over in Charlotte to see that room. They've added cameras. Shout out to the ACC's Tyler McBride and Amy Acola for taking me through there. It used to just be one camera in that room. Now there are like four cameras that ESPN could take control of and show various parts of that room. It has been one of the best additions to college football broadcasts over the last two seasons. Yeah, I would love to see more of that. And before we get out of here, we are in the midst of the NASCAR playoffs. And for a look ahead to their next media deals, other tweaks to the aforementioned playoff format, NASCAR COO Ben Kennedy sits down on the show this week.

17:22Well, the NASCAR Cup Series is in the thick of its chase. So with playoff season in full swing, we've got Ben Kennedy, NASCAR's chief operating officer, here for his SBJ Sports Media podcast debut. Ben, welcome into the pod. Hey, thanks for having me on. Good to be here today. No, I appreciate it. Let's get into it. So Bristol night race this Saturday. Got any good memories from, you know, the last great Coliseum from your years going to races there? It's a special place. I mean, there's nothing like Bristol Motor Speedway. I tell people all the time, it's so odd driving through the hills of Tennessee and seeing this massive footprint that makes up a racetrack called Bristol Motor Speedway in the middle of the foothills of the mountains out there.

18:07but an iconic racetrack for sure some of the best racing that we see especially on our short tracks and as we get into the chase i mean this is a new format that we put together we announced earlier this year has been really well received by our fans so far and um you know you think about the old format that we had where we go from 16 to 12 to 8 to championship four now we have all 16 drivers that are competing for the final 10 races so um the old format rewarded primarily winning races. We're still rewarding winning races with the 15 bonus points that you get for winning each race. But consistency is that much more important.

18:44So as we go into Bristol, it's not going to just be about winning, but it's about consistency for all those 16 drivers. Now you talk about making the playoffs more fan friendly. You actually did some fan friendly sort of undercover boss routine this season during that spring race at Darlington. You, some fellow executives, went into the stands. You were men of the people, getting the perspective of these fans. You didn't announce the move ahead of time or anything like that. So what did you think of the experience? How did you pull it off? Like, what did you learn? It was incredible. So it was me and my direct reports.

19:16And I told my team, I said, hey, we're going to go. We're going to go as fans. I don't want you guys to do any work. I don't want you to write any notes. I want you to just experience race day. So we broke up into groups. A few of us bought our tickets online. A few of us went through the call center. We all purchased tickets separately. we ended up all sitting together, but we had a blast. I mean, we got there at 10 in the morning, we tillgated with fans, hung out for a couple of hours, had a few beverages, went into the midway, got to see the fan zone for a little bit, eventually went to pre-race and sat in the stands to the race.

19:48And, you know, we came away with so many different learnings from it. I think the biggest thing, the biggest eye-opener for me is how daunting a racetrack can be. I mean, and you walk onto a property that's hundreds of acres, you got to tell me where Gate 37 is, where Entry 22 is, and then where my section is at the racetrack. So trying to make it a little more intuitive for a lot of the fans that come to our tracks, especially a lot of the first-time fans. And for people that are new to the track and new to NASCAR, we're trying to find ways to better educate them on what's happening in real time at our tracks.

20:22But the other thing that struck me is just how cool our sport is. Um, we had fans that had been going to Darlington for decades, multi-generational fans that were sitting around. And as, um, people were asking questions or pointing things out, everyone was so friendly and it felt like a big community. And on top of that, we got to see some amazing racing at Darlington. So we had a great day, did a little, uh, two hour after action the next day, took a bunch of notes and it's cool to see. So we had our, our Darlington fall race a couple of weeks ago, and there were already a lot of changes that we've implemented since we went there in spring.

20:57Well, the two tracks that we've talked about, Bristol, Darlington, those are core NASCAR track. They've been involved for decades with the sport, but you have been at the center of a lot of the new decisions being made, some of these successful initiatives at new locales. I'm talking about putting the clash at LA Memorial Coliseum, the Chicago street race. This season, you had the race at the Naval Base Coronado. You're going to be there again in 2027. So looking down the line, what are maybe some other newer markets that NASCAR can get to to create newer fans for the years ahead. Yeah, those races have been great.

21:30You know, you think about breaking NASCAR into a lot of these larger metro areas like downtown Los Angeles, downtown Chicago, a huge opportunity for us to bring the sport and racing to mass quantities of people. It could be much more difficult to bring new fans to a track that might be 45 minutes to an hour outside of their market, but bringing it to the people has been a huge opportunity for us to get new fans in the pipeline. And we've seen that, you know, Chicago the first year, 85 % of the people that came were brand new to the sport, 67 % for San Diego. We have people from 17 different countries fly in for that.

22:08So from a strategic point of view, it makes all the sense in the world for us to bring new fans into the fold, bring new partners into the fold. If you talk about a race on a military base, that now opens up a brand new category as it relates to commercial partners. A lot of folks in the defense industry like Andrew Hill has come in and partnered up with us. And as we think about the future, you know, we're going to be taking the same approach, right? We want to find a way to balance what makes NASCAR special in our DNA. And a lot of that is tradition, like the Darlington Southern 500 we had a couple weeks ago, Coke 600 Memorial Day weekend, Daytona 500 is probably always going to be 500 miles at some point in February.

22:49But if there are opportunities for us to innovate and take NASCAR to new markets, we're going to absolutely do that. So it talks a lot about international growth and development at some point in the future. I think that is going to be a priority for us, you know, trying to either go north, north of the border, potentially back south of the border at some point. And then, you know, overseas is something that we've considered as well. We talk a lot on this podcast, Ben, about this glut of properties that are going to be in the market for media rights over, call it whatever, two, three, four years, the short term there.

23:20But you all are locked in. You have$77 billion in deals. That began last season. I know Brian Herbst and his receding hairline, you know, getting that done, that was a haul. But are you already thinking about what NASCAR's next media rights deal could look like in the mid 2030s and beyond? Yeah, we are for sure. And Brian and I, with both of our receding hairlines, stay close on it. But yeah, it's something that we talk about regularly. We actually had a meeting with our race teams last week, and it was one of the hottest topics of conversations. You know, we are the second year into our new meteorite cycle.

23:57It's a seven-year deal. It's scary to think about. I mean, we are going to be on audition three years from now. So we talked about the first year of Chicago and how important that was to this current meteorite cycle. It was a huge part of bringing new partners into the fold. You know, we're thinking about three years from now, what's going to be that next big thing that we can deliver for the future of the sport? So something we're thinking about as we think about 2032 inventory, start dates, end dates, you know, frankly, should we be going up against the NFL at this point of the year on every single Sunday?

24:30It's a challenging proposition. So I think it's a huge opportunity for us to look at, you know, the inventory and frankly, what are we doing from a scheduling perspective and how do we find this balance between giving a good amount of inventory out to the media market while also trying to grow the sport as much as possible? Well, you do have a lot of inventory, but it also means, you know, a lot of media partners. And this is not something that's unique to NASCAR. The NFL has rights deals with every company that I can name out here in the media space. The NBA has gone and added media partners.

25:00So this isn't a NASCAR problem, unique to NASCAR. But, you know, how do you like respond to fans who are like, there are, I just don't know where the race is this week. And there's just a lot of media partners that you have over the course of the season. It's totally a fair point. And, you know, it's something that we try to do our best to communicate as much as we can ahead of time to our fans, whether it's on, you know, at this point, whether it's on USA or NBC to the summer months, obviously Amazon Prime and TNT and Fox and FS1. And the great part about the O 'Reilly series is every single weekend they can find it on the CW.

25:34So, you know, it's a little bit different for our Cup series. We're regularly communicating to our fans both when start times are and where to find us. We try to keep as much consistency as we can, especially when we get into the fall months as it relates to start times, because a lot of our fans expect to turn the TV on at three o 'clock. And regardless of what channel it's going to be, they're going to find NASCAR. And we've talked about this a lot from Saturday night racing and midweek racing to Sunday racing. Ratings and viewership always performs a lot better on a Sunday afternoon. I think a large part of that is because people are accustomed to tuning into NASCAR every Sunday.

26:10So if we keep the consistency from that perspective, and then it's our responsibility to make sure we're communicating out to fans where to find us each weekend. You know, we recently wrote about here at SPJ about just the breadth that NASCAR has in the video game space using your IP and not just your own economist game. But like you have presence, a huge presence in places like Roblox. You're in Fortnite. You're in Forza. Like, do you play those games at all? And like, how are fans connecting through this sort of medium? It's huge. And it's a great opportunity for us to engage new fans, but engage a younger demo of fans as well, especially as you talk about, you know, the Roblox's of the world.

26:50And if you look at the engagement impression numbers, they are through the roof on a lot of these platforms. So, you know, not only is it a way for us to show up and engage in this platform, but also be able to do it authentically as well, where people can go on roadblocks, you can develop your own track, you can actually race some of the cars that they get to see on Sunday every single weekend. And hopefully through that, we're driving them into the NASCAR world just out of consideration. so a huge opportunity from that perspective and then you know i would also say our partnership with iRacing and whether it's the console or the pc space has been tremendous as well so you know that's been great to get in front of a lot of consumers on you know ps5 and xbox but then also identify and develop the future generation of drivers so you know when i was a driver i could tell you i'd spend my mondays through thursdays on iRacing driving that track we're gonna race the upcoming weekend.

27:48And for a lot of fans, they don't have a chance to, you know, buy a go-kart or go to a local racetrack, but they can set up a wheel and pedals in their home and get a taste of what it's like to be a race car driver. So it's huge from an educational perspective for people to understand, just frankly, what our sport is and how we operate and what all of our rules are, get to learn the teams and drivers. And then, you know, hopefully we'll find, you know, the next Chase Elliott or Connor Zilich that will come from from one of these games too. Yeah, I feel like a lot of esports has, you know, struggled in the United States in particular.

28:20But I think the iRacing series really has been something that has been consistent. It immediately came up during the pandemic. Drivers could get on there. That was one of the first things we saw professionals doing. So I couldn't agree more in terms of what the iRacing series has been able to achieve. All right. A couple of quick hitters here to wrap things up. Got to ask you, you're going to have a cameo in the Days of Thunder sequel. Are we going to see Ben Kennedy on screen? I haven't been asked to yet. So it's a TBD. I will say I'm fired up for that, though. We got to see Tom and Anne in Daytona a couple of weeks ago with the Paramount crew.

28:53I have to say I am incredibly impressed at the amount of work that Tom has already done. I mean, he's studied the sport. He's a fan of the sport. He absolutely loves it. And he wants to take this as seriously as possible. So I can't wait to see how it all gets stitched together. But if I'm going to be in a cameo or not, probably remains to be seen. Well, I know a seminal comedy film, Talladega Nights, also with tons of NASCAR IP there. Do you have any favorite scene or quotable line from that movie? So I actually did make a cameo in Talladega Nights. Not many people would know this, but there is a scene when they return to Talladega and they're panning down from the track was actually having lunch in the garage area.

29:34I was a kid at the time and you could see I was a blur on the screen, but you know, that was another big one. Obviously that is an anniversary as well this year. And I think we're going to pull a couple of small things out of the hat later this year in Talladega to celebrate the 20th anniversary of that. I believe you're a Florida Gators alum. They're playing Auburn this Saturday. Do you have any favorite memories from games at the Swamp? absolutely yeah i i didn't have a chance to go to as many games as i'd like to i was racing at the time so i'd have to balance out going to a racetrack or or get into to florida game days but um we had so much fun in the swamp and like sitting in the student section even though you're baking in the florida sun on that on that side especially this time of year we had uh an absolute blast so remember a lot of those games um i gotta say some of my favorite were florida georgia though driving over to Jacksonville and a lot of friends that went to, uh, to Georgia and just being in a neutral location like Jacksonville.

30:32It was, uh, it was a good time. It's a great cocktail party. Love it. All right. Get you out of here on this. You talked about your driving days. Do you have a favorite track that you loved to race at? I got to say Bristol. I mean, I had the chance to win there in 2016 and the truck series. It's just iconic. It's a half mile racetrack. It's a Coliseum, like I said, in the middle of Tennessee. And it's a fun, fast little track. So I love Bristol. And then selfishly speaking, Daytona is just special to me as well. I mean, it's my home. It's where I grew up. And there's nothing like going around Daytona National Speedway.

31:10Awesome. I love it. Well, we got to drop Tom Cruzanote. Make sure you get that cameo in Days of Thunder too. Ben Kennedy, COO of NASCAR. Really appreciate you coming on the SBJ Sports Media Podcast. Absolutely. Thank you guys for having me on. Well, that does it for this week's SBJ Sports Media Podcast. Thanks to our guest, NASCAR COO Ben Kennedy. As always, thank you to our production team of Chris Mason, Reginald Walker, and AC Wyatt. And finally, thank you for listening. Please make sure to like and subscribe to the pod wherever you get your podcasts. For Austin Karp, I'm Josh Carpenter. We'll talk to you all again next week.

31:48Thank you.