According to an article in USA Today, “Comcast’s Xfinity brand will sponsor NASCAR’s No. 2 series for the next 10 years.” Prior to this announcement the racing series had been sponsored by Nationwide, and it was known as Nationwide Series. Although NationwideSeries.com is not resolving right now, it is registered to Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company.
It does not appear that the exact match XfinitySeries.com domain name is owned by Comcast or NASCAR. If you visit that domain name, you’ll see a standard GoDaddy landing page, and the domain name, which was created on August 31, 2014, appears to be registered to an individual in New Jersey. I am not sure if this person is affiliated with either of these brands.
Nationwide became the lead sponsor of the series in 2008, and they did not own the NationwideSeries.com domain name at the time of the announcment or for the first couple of years after the series was rebranded. Interestingly, in January of 2010, Fusible reported that “Nationwide Mutual Insurance purchased the domain name NationwideSeries.com for $6,000 at Sedo’s GreatDomains.” Perhaps we will see the same thing with this domain name, or perhaps the domain name is owned by someone connected with one of the brands.
The challenging thing is that I assume Comcast didn’t want to prematurely hand register the XfinitySeries.com domain name before a deal was struck because that could have theoretically weakened their hand in the negotiation if they appeared too eagar. Similarly, NASCAR would not have been able to register this domain name because it contains the name of Comcast’s Xfinity brand.
I’ll keep my eye on the XfinitySeries.com domain name to see what happens.
