NASCAR is considering international expansion beyond the United States and Mexico as it seeks to broaden its global audience, chief executive Steve O’Donnell has said.
The racing organisation is assessing potential locations for additional events, but O’Donnell said it first needed to establish stronger brand awareness in international markets.
“I don’t want to just export a race and plop it somewhere,” he said. “We want to build the culture so that when you go to a race, if we’re in Europe, you know, hey, that’s the NASCAR experience.”
O’Donnell, who became NASCAR’s chief executive in April, said he was “absolutely” open to taking the series abroad. The league currently holds races only in the US and Mexico.
He also pointed to the growing range of platforms carrying NASCAR as a way of reaching younger fans. Its content is available through Fox, Comcast’s NBC, Versant’s USA Network, Warner Bros Discovery’s TNT Sports and Amazon Prime Video under seven-year media rights agreements reportedly worth an estimated 7.7 billion dollars.
Rather than seeing the spread of exclusive rights across different services as a problem for viewers, O’Donnell said the arrangement offered more opportunities to discover the sport.
“For us [it’s] how many front doors can we give to a fan to come through and experience NASCAR,” he said. The organisation had previously been available on “maybe one or two networks”, he added, but had sought different approaches to reach younger audiences online and through streaming.
NASCAR is also hoping a forthcoming sequel to the 1990 film Days of Thunder will introduce the sport to new viewers. Tom Cruise is due to reprise his role as driver Cole Trickle, with Anne Hathaway set to co-star in the Paramount film, which is scheduled for release in summer 2028.
O’Donnell said Cruise had recently visited NASCAR’s headquarters in Daytona Beach, Florida, and was enthusiastic about the project. “Tom’s No. 1 message to us: He’s like, ‘You got to be ready because I’m going to put people [on], and they’re going to know what NASCAR’S about,’” he said.
His comments come as Formula One has attracted new fans through Netflix’s Drive to Survive documentary series and Apple’s 2025 film F1. The Brad Pitt film became Apple’s highest-grossing movie, while Ford v Ferrari was among the highest-grossing original films of 2019.
O’Donnell said NASCAR had experienced “a lot of momentum” after several difficult years, with its media partnerships, digital reach and film involvement helping to raise the organisation’s profile.
