Ben Kennedy explains growing NASCAR interest in international markets

In 2025, NASCAR will take the Cup Series to Mexico City for a points-paying race. It is a major deal for the sport as it looks to grow in new markets. Mexico is a country that loves motorsports and it should be a great crowd for the races next season.

Both the Cup Series and Xfinity Series will race in Mexico City next season. The Xfinity Series has been to the country before and many drivers enjoyed participating in those races.

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Ben Kennedy, executive vice president of NASCAR, spoke with Kevin Harvick this week on the Happy Hour podcast. The NASCAR official discussed the desire to get into international markets moving forward.

“As we think about it, we obviously, think about NASCAR as a company, we think about our broadcast partners, we think about our teams, we think about our drivers, and all the different stakeholders in the industry,” Kennedy explained to Harvick. “That was a big part of our conversations, right? As you take our racing to new markets and different places or different types of venues, it naturally should open the door to new opportunities, and a lot of those are partnership opportunities.

“So, I think the good news is ever since last Tuesday, we’ve already had a number of people reach out to us, and hopefully, on the team side, they’ve had some phone calls as well. Some potential new interests that they may not have otherwise had should we be racing that event in the States as an example.”

What about other countries? Canada? Possibly a race in Europe or maybe Japan? Well, not so fast.

Ben Kennedy wants to open new doors for teams, NASCAR

During the conversation with Kevin Harvick, Ben Kennedy touched on the topic of racing in Canada again. There were rumors that NASCAR wanted to race in Montreal in 2024, but those negotiations did not follow through.

Kennedy believes there is a possibility of going back to Canada in the future. Maybe even across the ocean to Europe.

“I think that opens up a new door for sure and as we think about other markets internationally, we’ve talked about Canada a lot,” the NASCAR exec continued. “I think that could potentially be an opportunity in the future. Talking abroad, I think the biggest challenge that we have as soon as you start to go abroad, especially when you start to talk about going over water, is naturally we just have so much inventory in our schedule.

“It’s 38 races and if you look at next year’s schedule, we’ll do the Clash, one weekend off, which a lot of people don’t call it an off week, we go to Daytona 500, we have one off week after that in April for Easter, and then we go straight through to the first weekend of November. Kind of keeping those two bookends at either side of the schedule it makes it more challenging logistically to go from, let’s just make it up, a Kansas to Brazil or Europe, wherever it might be.”

If you could pick one country for NASCAR to travel to for a race, where would it be?