Aaron Plessinger had just settled his lanky 6-foot-1 frame into his airplane seat — en route to Nashville, Tenn., for round 14 of the Monster Energy AMA Supercross season — when he was posed a question from the airline stewardess.
The long-haired, mustache-sporting athlete from Ohio turned to the young woman as she asked, a bit hesitantly, “Hey, are you Jason Anderson?”
Stifling a chuckle, Plessinger quickly informed her that he was not Jason Anderson.
Though they are both 6-foot-1, the two are starkly different, with Plessinger looking every bit like his “Cowboy” nickname while Anderson embraces a more “hip” style that meshes with the crowd in Southern California, where he resides.
“But she knew where I was from,” Plessinger said, as he stood under the Red Bull KTM awning in the pits at Tennessee’s Nissan Stadium explaining his recent encounter.
He added that the flight attendant later returned to his seat to share a message from her boyfriend, which was, “Get well soon, Cowboy.”
“That was pretty cool,” said Plessinger, who missed the final rounds of the Supercross season with an elbow injury.
Over the last two years, the Red Bull KTM rider feels the public run-ins with Supercross fans have become more frequent. It’s happened at grocery stores, gas stations and other equally random locations.
“That’s why I think the sport is growing a little bit, is just because we’re getting — well, I’m getting noticed in more and more places,” Plessinger said.
Of course, it helps that the 28-year-old has been trending upward with his results, which logically coincides with gaining more fans.
Ever since earning his first 450SX win at SnapDragon Stadium in San Diego, Calif., on Jan. 20, Plessinger noted the crowd’s roar during opening ceremonies when his name is called has grown significantly louder.
“I don’t like to think about myself in a celebrity kind of way, so it’s hard to realize that they’re cheering for me. But at the same time, I just feel like they’re appreciating what I’ve been giving out, so to have them react that way to me is so cool,” Plessinger said.
Plessinger has quickly become one of the most popular riders in the sport, boasting more than 400,000 followers on Instagram alone.
While Plessinger has one of the biggest personalities in the 450SX class, he’s not an outlier as far as social media followings and fan popularity goes.
There are nine full-time 450SX riders who have more than 500,000 followers on Instagram. The crazy part about it? Not all of them are champions, or even premier class race winners.
Ken Roczen, who is a two-time Pro Motocross champion but has yet to win a Supercross title, leads the sport with 1.6 million followers. On the flip side, longtime rider Dean Wilson, who has never won a 450SX main event or championship, has 782,000 fans following his endeavors.
This becomes surprising when comparing the place Supercross holds in American motorsports to other national series.
With NASCAR often being regarded as America’s most popular racing series, one would presume the TV viewership (which typically has an audience more than 2 million) has made many of the Cup Series drivers into national stars.
Same with IndyCar, which upholds the Indianapolis 500 — deemed The Greatest Spectacle in Racing — as its crown jewel.
Despite the country-wide recognition of the two aforementioned series, the popularity of the individual drivers who make up the NASCAR and IndyCar fields is either equal to or far below the status that Supercross riders have reached.
Let’s start by looking at social media — specifically, Instagram.
Two-time Cup Series champion Kyle Busch has 430,000 followers on the Meta-owned platform. The ever-versatile Kyle Larson, who stars in both NASCAR and the dirt-track circuit, has 347,000. Outspoken Denny Hamlin, who has won the Daytona 500 three times, has 245,000.
Shifting over to the open-wheel series, last year’s IndyCar champion Alex Palou has 98,000 followers. One of the sport’s winningest drivers, Scott Dixon, has 158,000. Meanwhile, four-time Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves has 142,000.
Keep in mind, these numbers do look a little different on other social media platforms.
NASCAR drivers have higher followings on X, formerly known as Twitter, that are closer to what one would expect of drivers belonging to America’s “top form of motorsports.”
For example, Busch has close to 1 million followers on X, Hamlin has more than 700,000 and Larson has just over half a million.
On the flip side, Supercross riders have a stronger following on Instagram and little-to-no presence on X. IndyCar drivers are spread evenly across both, but appear to maintain a mid-point status on all.
Jason Weigandt, who works as a play-by-play announcer for Supercross on the NBC broadcasts, has an idea as to why.
“You can make a 30-second clip or a photo of a dirt bike look really cool. It is harder to do that in pavement racing. Like what photo could you really put? What photo could you put of even the Daytona high banks that would look mind-boggling?” Weigandt posed. “What clip can you show besides a crash or the burnout at the end?”
He views Supercross as an industry that’s ready-made for social media. The footage is cool, it serves consumers’ short attention span and it’s the type of content that resonates with a younger crowd.
Rockstar Energy Husqvarna rider Malcolm Stewart has another explanation — relatability.
“People can go to the motorcycle shop, buy a dirt bike and pretend to be Ken Roczen or Malcolm Stewart. It’s a lot easier than saying, ‘I’m gonna go get in some sheet metal and drive 200 miles an hour and go left,’” Stewart said, chuckling. “I mean, you could do it in your Nissan or whatever car, but you may get a ticket.”
In the opinion of Adam Cianciarulo — one of the core, fan-favorite riders of the industry — it comes down to the physicality of the sport in comparison to the sit-behind-the-wheel routines seen in NASCAR and IndyCar.
“It’s like a fist fight out there,” Cianciarulo said. “It feels like such a personal battle. It’s like gladiators in an arena almost. We’re basically riding around on weapons out there and trying to beat each other at all costs. It’s just a gnarly sport.”
In addition to that ready-made, thrilling competition, a lot has changed behind-the-scenes in the Supercross industry over the past few years, including teams being more relaxed with how riders present themselves off the track.
“There was always this idea that the teams were holding the riders back, (but the truth is), they don’t care. I think once people started letting loose and then looked over their shoulder and realized no one was mad at them, they kept doing it,” Weigandt said.
In the modern era of NASCAR, many fans have complained about the cookie-cutter image that the big teams have impressed upon the new generation of drivers.
Most of the outspoken, personality-rich characters in the stock car series are veterans — Busch, Hamlin, Brad Keselowski and Martin Truex Jr. come to mind.
The result of that personality? Fan engagement.
Busch, Hamlin, Keselowski and Truex Jr. each have more than 500,000 followers on X.
That same correlation is seen in Supercross, only it happens with a lot more riders and not just with the veterans of the sport. Furthermore, unlike NASCAR, it’s rare for a professional Supercross team to try to control an athlete’s image.
“The two professional teams I’ve been with, they’ve really embraced (my personality). They don’t tell me, ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that,’” Plessinger explained. “I think they see the reaction from the fans and how big it gets when I walk out of the truck and I’m just swamped with people. It shows them, well, maybe it’s pretty good to have this.”
Along those same lines, reigning Supercross champion Chase Sexton, 24, considers his 434,000-person following to be a positive thing.
“I think the riders are doing their job, but maybe the promoters and the people who run our sport could do a better job on their side,” Sexton said.
He recognizes that the creation of SuperMotocross — which combined Supercross and AMA Pro Motocross into one overarching series in 2023 — was Feld Motor Sports (Supercross owner) and MX Sports Pro Racing’s (motocross owner) attempt to elevate both series.
And yes, that change has helped.
Two-time Supercross champions Eli Tomac and Cooper Webb have had an astounding number of fans waiting in line for an autograph throughout the entire season — perhaps a result of that unification.
“It’s nonstop at our rig, which is awesome. I feel like for me, I’ve been gaining some fans, which is great,” said Webb, who has more than 760,000 followers on Instagram. “I’ve seen people like lining up at like eight o’clock in the morning and it’s like, ‘Wow, they’re committed.’ Maybe they just like the old dogs.”
Tomac, who is the second-most followed athlete with 1 million Instagram followers, added, “It for sure grows every year. It’s cool to see the attendance in the stands, it seems like it’s up and our autograph lines are huge. It’s cool to see the dedication.”
Despite the growth, it feels like there’s still further to fly.
“I think Supercross is just kind of breaking the surface,” Plessinger said. “We’ve had times where one race is on one TV channel and then you have to switch over the channels (for the next one) and then nobody knows where to watch it. NASCAR? It’s been on the same channel forever. Any given Sunday you can just click on it and be like, ‘Oh, well there is it.’
“If we could get on that kind of network and just keep it there, I think a lot more people would see the sport, know the sport and it would just grow in that way.”
One of the main reasons why the creation of SuperMotocross was significant was because it included a five-year broadcast deal with NBC Sports. All 31 events now air live on Peacock, with additional coverage split among the NBC Television Network, USA Network and CNBC.
But even with the new deal, the ratings for Supercross fall incredibly short of NASCAR’s viewership on NBC and FOX.
“I don’t know if you can grow the TV audience 10 times. This sport has certainly tried,” Weigandt offered. “All I can think of is that there might be a day where they start looking at all the metrics and we’re not determining the size of a sport exclusively by TV rating alone.”
If that’s the case, Supercross is certainly on the same playing field as its four-wheel counterparts and it appears that the two-wheel series is trending upward.
THIS ARTICLE IS REPOSTED FROM THE June 6 EDITION OF SPEED SPORT INSIDER
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