Nascar Seeks to Woo Latinos With Fox Deportes Agreement

By TANZINA VEGA

Nascar dads and Hispanics could be seen as being on opposite sides of the political fence, but that has not stopped Nascar from reaching an agreement with Fox Deportes, the Spanish-language cable sports channel, to broadcast 15 races starting in February.

The agreement includes the broadcast of six live races, including the Daytona 500, which will be broadcast in Spanish for the first time. Among other events are races at the Bristol Motor Speedway, Charlotte Motor Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway.

Latinos make up just 10 percent of Nascar viewers. Nascar recently released research showing that it needed to reach a younger and more diverse audience to help offset falling attendance and television ratings. It recently hired Ogilvy & Mather to help create a marketing plan to attract Latinos to the sport, and it has put a number of people on its communications and marketing teams to focus on young viewers and Hispanic outreach.

“It's important for us across the board to have a diverse fan base,” said Steve Herbst, vice president for broadcasting and production at Nascar. “We want our fan base to look and feel like America. We want it to be similar to what makes up the entire population.”

To help introduce Latinos to the sport, Fox Deportes will produce four 30-minute educational programs before the races that will explain the sport's history, rules, drivers and culture. The network will also produce weekly and daily news segments to be run leading up to and during the races.

Whether Latinos will embrace the driving culture remains to be seen. Hispanics in the United States are big consumers of baseball and soccer, which are popular in many countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Many major league baseball players are Hispanic.

“We have to redefine the paradigm of who the U.S. Latino market is,” said Vincent Cordero, executive vice president and ge neral manager at Fox Deportes. “Across the board, a paradigm has been based on a concept that's probably dated.”

Nascar has a handful of Latino drivers, including Juan Pablo Montoya of Colombia and Nelson Piquet Jr. and Miguel Paludo of Brazil. This year, Viva La Raza Racing became the first Mexican auto racing team to be a part of Nascar.

Getting Latinos to watch Nascar on television would also be the first step toward getting them to buy tickets to live events. “For every sport, we want people in the building,” Mr. Herbst said. “Nascar is no different.”

A version of this article appeared in print on 08/20/2012, on page B6 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Nascar Seeks to Woo Latinos With Fox Deportes Agreement.