Brooks Deaton, Vice President of Data & Insights at NASCAR sat down with Knit Co-Founder & CEO, Aneesh Dhawan, at The Media Insights & Engagement Conference in Scottsdale, AZ on February 3-5, 2025 to show off how Knit's Researcher-Driven AI platform is fueling NASCAR’s ability to keep a pulse on its ever-evolving fandom. Aneesh and Brooks dove into how Researcher-Driven AI is allowing for NASCAR to get to "report-ready insights" to drive quicker decisions – while overviewing real world insights across NASCAR's evolution in media, fandom, event experience and more.
February 3, 2025
Scottsdale, AZ
The challenge:
Traditional research timelines took 4–6+ weeks — far too slow for NASCAR’s fast-moving environment, particularly when reacting to major shifts like media rights negotiations or race weekend feedback.
How Knit solved it:
Knit enabled NASCAR to go from research fielding to insight delivery in as little as 24–72 hours, helping the team meet critical deadlines and support key decisions with timely, data-backed recommendations.
“Traditionally, it was four to six-plus weeks before we delivered insights. When there are opportunities to make that more efficient, we really want to capitalize.”
— Brooks Deaton, VP of Data & Insights at NASCAR
The challenge:
The organization was heavily quantitative and struggled to connect emotionally with internal and external stakeholders using just numbers and charts.
How Knit solved it:
Knit provided AI-powered video reels and curated voice-of-fan content that brought data to life. These showreels made it easier to create compelling, human-centered stories to share with industry partners, sponsors, and executives.
“What my team loved a lot was being able to create more of these reels… and humanize what the data is telling us.”
The challenge:
NASCAR’s fan panel produced thousands of open-end responses weekly, but manual analysis was slow, labor-intensive, and underutilized — leading to valuable data being ignored.
How Knit solved it:
Knit’s AI automatically ingested and analyzed thousands of open-ended comments, identified key themes, and enabled reporting — giving the team usable, scalable insights with minimal lift.
“We were taxing our consumers and not doing anything with it. Knit lets us just dump in the data and get so much further along in the process.”
The challenge:
As the central hub for insights, NASCAR needed to translate research into meaningful, accessible stories for teams, tracks, broadcasters, and corporate partners — but lacked an efficient workflow to do so.
How Knit solved it:
Knit combined quant, qual, open text, and video into one platform — with tools to generate key insights, narrative summaries, and ready-made content for presentations and reports. This made storytelling faster, deeper, and more scalable.
“We really want to be a beacon of intelligence for our industry… Knit helps us deliver better storytelling and impact.”
The challenge:
The insights team was small relative to the scale of their data needs, and struggled to keep up with internal requests for faster turnaround and deeper analysis.
How Knit solved it:
Knit provided automation where it mattered — from AI summarization and text coding to dashboard generation and insight surfacing — reducing manual effort and allowing the team to focus on strategic thinking.
“It simplifies the process so much for us. For a team that doesn’t have a lot of bandwidth, that’s huge.”
