23XI Racing and Robinhood recently announced a partnership that makes the American financial services company an official partner of the Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan-owned NASCAR Cup Series team.
Robinhood, which provides an electronic trading platform that facilitates trades of stocks, exchange-traded funds, options, index options, futures contracts, outcomes on prediction markets, and cryptocurrency, is set to be featured on the three 23XI Racing cars and driver uniforms beginning with this weekend's Goodyear 400 at Darlington Raceway.
Additionally, full-time driver Bubba Wallace and development driver Corey Heim, who is set to make select starts for 23XI Racing later this year, are both set to run cars with Robinhood primary paint schemes later this year.
“Yeah, there are primaries for Corey and myself," Wallace told Beyond the Flag. "My two are Bristol and Vegas, Bristol-2 and Vegas-2, so I haven't seen a car yet, but they say the color is going to be bright."
Heim is set to debut a primary Robinhood scheme in the AdventHealth 400 at Kansas Speedway next month.
Wallace had not been super familiar with Robinhood before the partnership, and he considers himself relatively new to investing.
“I honestly say I haven't," he admitted. "But I’m so new to investing in general. I’m late to the game, as of maybe three or four years ago, maybe a little bit longer. But I never really understood the importance of it. Sounds simple, just invest your money and watch it grow from a 30,000-foot elevation.
"But now that I've been more involved with the account side on that in our personal funding stuff, it has definitely become at the top of the list, and not to mention my wife has a finance major, so it definitely goes hand in hand for sure. So excited to see it all grow together."
But Robinhood Chief Brokerage Officer Steve Quirk, who was also a part of the interview, told Wallace that he is actually ahead of the curve, rather than late to the game, given the fact that he has had three or four years of experience investing at the age of 31.
"I would say, at your age, if you started three years ago, you're probably ahead of the curve [compared to] most people," Quirk told Wallace.
Wallace responded.
“Oh yeah, we're in good shape then! Feel like we've done some good so far, so got to keep it going.”
Quirk gave us additional details about the company, and he also went into why they chose to get involved in NASCAR now, specifically why they chose 23XI Racing for their first national partnership.
"In terms of financial services, it’s a relatively new company," Quirk said of Robinhood. "When I say that, 2014, but [it's experienced] explosive growth. I come from the world of Charles Schwab, and it took TD Ameritrade like six decades to get to 20 million customers. Robinhood's got 25 million customers, and those came in like four years.
"It's a lot of young people, really kind of unrepresented in financial services. Our average age is just over 30. Half of the people here are first-time investors, and what Robinhood's been ultra successful in doing is just removing the friction, both in the experience and also in what you need in terms of investable assets to be able to get into the market, and then helping educate people so that they can do it in a suitable manner so that it can be something that's a lifelong journey."
As for why the NASCAR partnership made sense, Quirk said it has a lot to do with the fact that the NASCAR fans and young people looking to invest share a lot in common. Many times, they're the same people.
“Our customers intersect, so they're four times more likely in sports in general, but also in motorsports, particularly NASCAR, to be fans, than a non-Robinhood client," he explained. "So it's just a natural fit, and this is actually our first national partnership. We have three NBA teams, but we've never done anything on a broader scale, and I think we're pretty aligned on where 23XI is going."
The three NBA teams are the Washington Wizards, the Memphis Grizzlies, and the Miami Heat.
As for why Robinhood and 23XI Racing, which also field full-time entries for Tyler Reddick and Riley Herbst, are a perfect fit, the question is really why they wouldn't be.
“Just like where they're going," Quirk continued. "I think they're pretty data-driven, and so are we. But we also like success. Nobody leaves a brokerage firm because they're having a whole bunch of success and making a bunch of money. They stay put and they reward you with more of their business, and so we like teams that are having success."
Though the partnership has only officially begun this week, it has been a long time in the making.
“I actually think they started probably a little over a year ago," Quirk said of the discussions with 23XI Racing. "We had actually been doing an event in Daytona for probably five or six years with some of our counterparties, and we just saw the interest, and we brought a lot of customers to those events, and we just saw the extreme interest in the sport.
"We sort of built off of that. Sport partnerships are pretty new to Robinhood in general. We're only about two years in from our first sports partnership, so it's newer to us."