Laying out NASCAR’s dire straits

NASCAR Attendance and TV Ratings

Dave Caldwell wrote this piece for Forbes
I am a veteran journalist and lifetime sports-lover
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

Live attendance and television ratings at NASCAR races did not just start declining yesterday. It is a stale, decade-old story, with race tracks removing thousands of seats that had been filled in NASCAR’s prime, and faithful stock-car couch potatoes tuning elsewhere.

It appears, however, that fans are now deserting in droves. Sunday’s big Monster Energy Cup race at Talladega, Ala., won by Joey Logano on a gorgeous afternoon, was run before grandstands that were mostly filled, but empty enough that the word “TALLADEGA" in unused seats at each end was visible.

(Maybe overhead shots from the Goodyear blimp are not such a great way to sell the sport.)

But it was the television ratings from Talladega — one of NASCAR’s most famous tracks — that were most eye-opening. The race delivered a 2.85 national rating on Fox, with 4.7 million viewers. The same race in 2017, a week later but also on Fox, had a 3.5 rating and 5.9 million viewers.

That is an 18% drop in ratings and a 20% drop in viewership, but it gets even more grim. The 2016 race at Talladega had a 4.0 national rating, with 6.7 million viewers. So in just two years, the race lost two million of 6.7 million viewers — a 30% plunge. (The same race 10 years ago drew nine million viewers, incidentally.)

On the previous weekend, a race at Richmond drew a crowd estimated by news media at about 42,500, not bad for stands that now seat about 50,000. But there used to be 112,000 seats at Richmond, which were filled for 33 Cup races in a row through 2008.

The Richmond race had a 1.8 rating and three million viewers on Fox, down 38% in ratings and 34% in viewership from the 2017 spring race there (2.9, with 4.6 million viewers) — and down 42% in ratings and 36% in viewership from the 2016 race (3.1, with 4.7 million viewers).

The first six Cup races this year, including the Daytona 500, drew a total of 31.07 million on TV. The first six Cup races in 2016 drew 43.13 million. That is a 28% drop.

Take a closer look at the Talladega TV numbers. Only about 23% of viewers for this year’s race were ages 18-49. Viewers 18-49 constituted more than 26% of the viewing audience in 2017.

In contrast, 45% of the TV viewers for the NBA playoff game Sunday afternoon on ABC between Indiana and Cleveland — 3.088 million of 6.804 million — were ages 18-49. The 18-49 percentage was 38% for an NHL playoff game Sunday afternoon between Pittsburgh and Washington, or 839,000 of 2.175 million. (Numbers courtesy of SportsMediaWatch.com.)

But enough with the stats. Longtime NASCAR fans simply want to flip on the TV, settle in and watch a close and entertaining race unfold. Strategies develop among the leaders who emerge early, and the winner is the driver who races hard while dodging trouble. A race has a buildup, like the plot in a book or a movie.

NASCAR has changed its rules so many times to gin up competition that the show seems contrived. The most preposterous innovation was to divide races into “stages," where points are awarded after each segment and the cars are bunched back up and then restarted. If more fans would tune in, NASCAR would deserve credit. But ratings tumble.

Fans grumble that there are, or seem to be, more advertisements wedged into a telecast. So there is no continuity, no unspooling of the narrative thread. Favorite drivers have retired, replaced by younger drivers with less Southern charm, and longtime sponsors to whom fans have shown brand loyalty have left the sport.

Times have changed. TV ratings are falling in almost every sport. Americans might not love cars, or racing, as much as they used to, and you can’t turn back the clock. But the decline is steeper. Only 48,000 tickets were sold for a race last month at Bristol, a speed bowl with a capacity of 162,000.

The TV contract with Fox and NBC runs through 2024. You don’t have to be a math major to figure out that if NASCAR continues to lose one-third of its audience every two years, there won’t be any audience left when the contract ends, and maybe no advertisers, either.

Is it too late for an intervention, and who would make it? Any ideas? Anyone