The Pros & Cons of the WAG-Cam
If you are reading this, I am assuming you are a fairly hard-core fan of the NTT IndyCar Series. If that is the case, I am hoping you are old enough to remember back in the day when ABC was famous for their use of the Wives and Girlfriends (WAG)-Cam. The two most blatant examples of the overuse of the WAG-Cam were the closing laps of the 1982 and 1989 Indianapolis 500s.
As Rick Mears was closing in on Gordon Johncock in the 1982 race, it seemed we saw Rick’s wife Dina on the pit stand, as much as we saw the two cars battling on track. It got worse with the 1989 race, as Al Unser, Jr. and Emerson Fittipaldi were jostling for the lead; the TV shots kept switching to a split-screen of Shelley Unser and Teresa Fittipaldi. Each shot of Shelley showed her with her head down, or a very concerned look on her face. Teresa appeared to be sending some type of voodoo energy, through some type of bizarre hand gesture each time the two cars went by.
The constant use of the WAG-Cam infuriated hard-core fans. They argued it was a distraction that had nothing to do with the race, and the screen should have never deviated from the race itself. ABC and defenders of the WAG-Cam claimed that they were appeasing the causal fan and the female viewers by showing the human element of the sport, and how the outcome personally affected the families of the drivers involved. So-called TV experts claimed that such shots actually boosted ratings for future events.
Over time, the use of the WAG-Cam was diminished, but it never fully went away; and it probably shouldn’t. For their final time to cover the Indianapolis 500, ABC used the WAG-Cam fairly extensively on Liz Power nervously chewing her water bottle, as her husband was headed toward victory. This past May, NBC did a nice job of balancing the action on the track with only the occasional shot of Ashley Newgarden in the pits. They did get a memorable shot of Ashley sort of collapsing to her knees as Josef crossed the Yard of Bricks.
NBC has seemed to be able to strike the right balance between satisfying the racing fans by focusing mostly on the action on the track, with a few side shots showing the wives or girlfriends on an occasional basis – just to keep the human side of the story going.
They weren’t so balanced this past weekend, in their coverage of the Kansas City Chiefs visiting the New York Jets on Sunday Night Football (SNF). Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past few days, you know that singer/songwriter Taylor Swift attended her second consecutive Chiefs game to watch her latest significant other, Travis Kelce, play for the Chiefs. Kelce is the latest celebrity love-interest for Swift. Others have suffered public break-ups and the guy usually has a not-so-flattering song written about him.
Die-hard NFL fans have been in an uproar over how much media attention this has gotten all week, and especially how NBC treated it during the game. The WAG-Cam was in full-force. I heard on the radio one morning that someone has actually gone back and counted how many times NBC cut the camera shot to Swift in the suite, with her celebrity fans. I think I’m supposed to know who Blake Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds are, but I don’t. I guess I’m the one living under a rock. Anyway, they were also in the suite with Swift, along with a couple of other so-called famous people.
Fans are complaining that the Swift celebrity suite got more attention from NBC than the actual game did. I watched the first half of the game, and will admit I grew a little tired of the Swift references – but I wasn’t going bonkers like others seemed to. I just found it a little annoying.
But the numbers don’t lie. The Swift Game brought massive TV ratings. I’ve seen claims that the game had the highest rating for Sunday programming over any network since Super Bowl LVII back in February. That’s pretty impressive. I’ve also seen that the game brought ratings that were 22% higher than the average rating for SNF. Maybe most impressive is the jump in female viewers (ages 12-17), which was up over 53% higher than normal for that age group. That last group represents the next generation of football fans.
Few people are hearing wedding bells for Swift and Kelce. Most are predicting that the two will have a nasty break-up and she will end up writing a song about him too.
Let’s suspend reality for a moment and make a few (wild) assumptions. I would use Josef Newgarden in this hypothetical situation, because he and Swift both hail from nearby Hendersonville, TN – just north of Nashville – and they are roughly the same age, although Swift is about a year older. I won’t use Newgarden because he is married. But let’s assume Swift and Kelce break up, which isn’t a wild assumption at all.
Where it gets wild is where we assume that she starts dating IndyCar driver Conor Daly. That’s a huge assumption, but Daly is single and he and Swift are close to the same age. In reality, that is about the only thing the two have in common. Another assumption is that Daly gets another fulltime ride. If those two things were true, would you be in favor of NBC and IndyCar capitalizing on their romance?
We’ve seen famous spouses and significant others trackside in recent years. Actress Ashley Judd was probably at the peak of her popularity when she married Dario Franchitti. She rubbed a few fans the wrong way, when she sounded off on racing topics that she usually knew very little about. But even at her peak, she was nowhere the global superstar that Taylor Swift is.
Quarterback Aaron Rodgers was dating Danica Patrick when she was driving in her farewell Indianapolis 500 in 2018. I remember seeing a swarm around her pit on Carb Day. I was surprised just how big he was as he towered over everyone around him. That brought about a mild frenzy, but again – Rodgers does not have the global popularity that Swift does.
David Letterman’s appearance in the IndyCar paddock barely raises eyebrows anymore; which seems hard to believe. Three decades ago, he was one of the biggest stars in the country. He retired from The Late Show in 2015, and has been mostly forgotten about by the general public.
In 1995, football greats Joe Montana and Walter Payton were part-owners of Chip Ganassi Racing and Dale Coyne Racing, respectively. That created some buzz, but that was a generation ago. Many reading this will barely remember it.
Swift’s presence on Sunday night turned Met Life Stadium into something of a three-ring circus. NBC was more than happy to capitalize on the WAG-Cam and the NFL seems grateful that they did. With all the information regarding concussions that has come out, and sports in general not being as popular with young fans – the NFL is ecstatic that young girls have suddenly tuned into NFL games.
Going back to the crazy scenario I described; IndyCar would suddenly be on the radar of young fans. Realizing that young fans are very fickle and most would lose interest as soon as Swift lost interest in Daly; would we welcome or shun the paparazzi that would follow Swift to the IndyCar paddock?
We’ve see the outrage from true NFL fans just this past week, about how over-the-top all of the media has become to indulge the Swifties. Will the same frenzy follow the Chiefs to Minneapolis this weekend when they play the Vikings? Word has it that even Kelce is growing tired of all the extra attention – this from a guy that never met a camera or microphone he didn’t love. You can imagine how the rest of the team feels.
But it made an NFL game seem like the fashionable place to be. While that may not hold any significance to you or me, it carries a great deal of weight for many of the masses in our society. The NFL is anxious for that trend to continue.
Such a scenario like the improbable Swift/Daly romance would be an incredible boost to IndyCar ratings and awareness – but at what cost? It would certainly help attract potential sponsors to Daly’s car and the broadcast in general, but would it turn the atmosphere upside down? Many racing fans enjoy getting into the paddock on any given race weekend, but they want to see race cars and drivers up close. They don’t care about Swift and the beautiful people she hangs out with. Her presence in the IndyCar paddock or on the pit stand during a race would surely change things for the real racing fans – and probably not for the better.
I don’t think we need to worry about Taylor Swift falling head-over-heels in love with Conor Daly. If they broke up, he may even suffer the indignation of no song at all being written about him. But race car drivers do attract celebrity love interests occasionally. If a global superstar close to the same level of Taylor Swift was to suddenly start dating an IndyCar driver, it would certainly mean the rebirth of the WAG-Cam – but would all of the extra attention would be a good thing, or a bad thing?
George Phillips
Oilpressure 
October 6, 2023 at 4:33 am
Maybe Daly needs to date Swift to get another full time drive!
October 6, 2023 at 8:05 am
A few comments:
Yes, I found the WAG cam an issue for 1982 and 1989 – but since I was there in person, didn’t affect me as much. What irritates me more is that there does not seem to a clean version of the feed without the WAG cam for archival use. At least I don’t recall ever seeing it without the WAG cam.
I don’t have an issue with celebrities in the paddock; if it brings attention to Indycar that is good. Might it create some issues for regular fans, maybe. Generally these things come in waves; I expect that Taylor will eventually have conflicts and not be at every game. The same would happen in Indycar. Ashley was not at every event. Resident movie star Becky Hinchcliffe seems to be working more than James as an example. Would Taylor Swift create a frenzy, probably. She created one on Facebook without even knowing it. Last week Indycar posted a throwback picture but didn’t provide a detailed caption, which was a mistake. The picture was of TK’s 10 car from Belle Isle that he DROVE (key is past tense) with the Taylor Swift 1989 album livery. The “fans” went nuts calling Indycar everything under the sun. Thinking this was a concept for 2024 to bring attention to Indycar. Every 10th comment was “Tony drove this car for Ganassi years ago, this is not new or future.”, but the vitriol continued. My thought, we I saw the livery in person at Detroit was twofold, good to have different money coming into Indycar (I think it was from CURB records) and wow that is a very busy/distracting livery. A few months ago Indycar did a Q&A with drivers asking what their favorite TS song was. Most had an positive opinion – Tony mentioned that he drove the TS car – David Malukas first said “no” but then backtracked “I don’t want people to hate me – yes I’m a Swiftie.” Tying current pop culture to Indycar for relevance is a marketing approach. My daughter asked me how often I think about the Roman Empire (for some reason a question being asked on social media), my response so she knew I saw the Indycar clip was “as often as Pato”.
No one seemed to mind when Mark Wahlberg was at Iowa last year – he was interacting with everyone, based on the clips I saw.
Back when Walter Payton was with Coyne (and racing too) on Belle Isle, my wife and I walked by their transporter in the paddock, he was sitting on the steps all alone. She didn’t recognize him, but neither did the 100’s of people streaming by.
The pros align with the reason we have the Snake Pit at the 500; attract people who would otherwise not attend a race and a percentage of them become fans of the racing. I’m not convinced this has a high conversion rate. I have told casual fans the lineup for the Snake Pit was and have gotten positive reaction – considering going due to the talent. Same concept at Iowa with the concerts. Heck, F1 in Austin in 2021 had Billy Joel, Kool and the Gang, and 21 Pilots for concerts after the racing.
Some people lost their minds when Flavor Flav was highlighted at Detroit. Both ways – I posted pictures and my non-racing friends were all very excited to know more. Some racing fans were irritated that he got airtime. My counterpoint was that he brought more coverage to the event. Drivers were talking about him. I was asked by a McLaren PR rep if I knew where he was because the McLaren team wanted to get him to come to the paddock – they did find him and took pictures. This is all promotion and trying to grow – and when you enjoy someone’s work, meeting them is exciting, be that a racer, musician, actor, or other athlete.
I’ve seen Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell at F1 events – they have a relationship with Williams I think – and have encouraged them to check out Indycar at Long Beach (in their backyard so to speak) – Tim Grunhard (former Center for Kansas City) has been to NASCAR events, I reply to his tweets to check out Indycar. These people have follower that might check out Indycar if they do.
I think as long as the coverage of Taylor does not take away from the game coverage, its all good – if it wins over some new fans for the NFL, good for them.
October 6, 2023 at 9:07 am
Maybe I’m overgeneralizing, but sports — especially on the big networks — tend to be aimed at people who don’t watch sports. In an attempt to get more eyeballs, content providers offer “relatable” elements such as WAG cam shots and infield features — that is, try to get more people to watch by diverting attention from the featured programming they are presumably watching.
I get it, going “Up Close and Personal” provides extra context … and this stuff will change for the better or the worse as the concept of “broadcasting” changes … but the hardcore fan of any sport will probably resent the need for efforts to broaden that sport’s appeal.
October 6, 2023 at 9:16 am
The real question is, would Swift dating Conor Daly be enough to bring back chassis competition? From Swift, of course…
The WAG-cam proved its worth when Indycar used clips of Liz Power watching her husband wreck at the Fontana finale for “The Offseason”, their Office parody promo videos during the 2012-2013 offseason.
Hey, remember when Will Power had THAT haircut?
October 6, 2023 at 9:45 am
Also, I don’t know if this says more about the actor or the movie… but the Ryan Reynolds that George is unaware of voiced the main character in Turbo.
October 6, 2023 at 10:00 am
Not a big fan of the WAG cam unless they are showing the wife of the guy that drives the #9 car.
October 6, 2023 at 7:23 pm
“I’m not a very graceful person. I was a sloppy skier, a sloppy tennis player, a sloppy football player and a sloppy dancer with anyone other than Joanne. The only thing I found grace in was racing a car.” – Paul Newman
he used to cause a crowd at races.
October 7, 2023 at 9:27 am
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