Gifts for NASCAR Fans
NASCAR 25 Producer Matt Lewis addressed the lack of alcoholic beverage sponsors in the new NASCAR console game during a recent interview, explaining the intricate factors that go into their inclusion in the game.
Though NASCAR fans have enjoyed iRacing’s NASCAR 25, they have had a hard time overlooking one specific thing missing from the newest NASCAR console game.
When NASCAR 25 opened early access in October, fans quickly found out that the game does not include sponsorships from companies that sell alcoholic beverages, such as Traveller Whiskey, Busch Light, and Rebel Bourbon.
This is nothing new to NASCAR fans, and the resulting lack of these sponsors brought back the “kid-friendly” paint schemes that populated NASCAR games of the past.
For example, in NASCAR 25, Justin Allgaier’s Traveller Whiskey No. 40 is simply the JR Motorsports No. 40, similar to cars like the “Dale JR No. 8 (replacing Budweiser) or the Sterling Marlin No. 40 (replacing Coors Light) in the EA line of NASCAR games.
Despite this familiar alteration of these paint schemes, more modern NASCAR games, mostly from the past decade, have included these sponsors, leading fans to wonder how and why this happened in NASCAR 25, and if NASCAR 26 could see these sponsorships make a return.
During a recent interview with Eve Hannah, Matt Lewis, a Producer at iRacing, explained what goes into getting approval to add these sponsors to NASCAR video games and what fans can expect in the future.
Lewis says that while there are ways of adding these sponsors to games without younger players having access to any of their paint schemes, via previously used age-gating services, the decision ultimately comes down to these companies deciding they “want to be associated with video games.”
“For better or for worse, there’s still a perception out there that video games and kids are sort of hand in hand. And even though the vast majority of our audience for this game are well above, not just 18, but even the drinking age, there is that concern, right? So in a lot of cases, it’s the beverage companies themselves who say, ‘We don’t, we don’t really need to be in a video game because that’s predominantly kids.'” — Matt Lewis.
Though Lewis did not directly say this is why the sponsors were not in NASCAR 25, he also didn’t rule out their inclusion in future games, saying it “depends on each development year.”
“We have the conversation almost every year of whether we’re going to allow it and how we’re going to allow it,” Lewis said. “So it’s another one that I would say is on on the radar. We’ll kind of see how things play out.”
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