NASCAR Pacts With Twitter to Live-Stream In-Car Video for Playoff Series Races – Variety

NASCAR — for the first time in its history — will live-stream an in-car camera feed on Twitter for all 10 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs races in 2017.

Under the deal, NASCAR’s look from inside a race car with a live camera stream that can be accessed via its official Twitter handle (@NASCAR) and nascar.twitter.com. On the same screen of the live stream, fans will see a real-time curated timeline of tweets about each race. The in-car feeds also be available on NASCAR’s website and NASCAR Mobile app.

The full broadcast of the races will be carried on NBCSN, NBCSports.com and the NBC Sports app, starting with the race at Chicagoland Speedway on Sunday, Sept. 17.

The Twitter deal is “a fantastic way to complement” the live races on NBC Sports and the NBC Sports app, said Steve Phelps, NASCAR’s EVP and chief global sales and marketing officer. “Through the in-car camera live stream on Twitter, our fans will have another compelling vantage point of the NASCAR Playoffs, where the energy and intensity of stage racing will be elevated to a whole new level,” he said.

For Twitter, the NASCAR deal is part of its steady push to bring more premium video onto the platform. In the second quarter, Twitter hosted 625 live video events, which reached reached 55 million unique viewers (up 22% sequentially from Q1). Upcoming video launches on Twitter include BuzzFeed News morning show “AM to DM” and a 24-hour news network developed with Bloomberg Media.

The NASCAR Playoffs live stream will be accessible for free for logged-in and logged-out users in the U.S. In addition, the racing league will make real-time race highlights available on its Twitter handle.

Also covered under the pact: emoji. Leading up to the first playoffs race Sept. 17, NASCAR will debut individual Twitter emoji and hashtags for all 16 drivers competing in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, available to Twitter users until each driver is eliminated from championship contention.