Weekly races at smaller locales have come off even worse. Racing is still pretty danged dangerous. They shut down the polls and went ahead with it anyway. NASCAR ratings have been on the decline over the last decade as they have taken a significant drop. (It did.) Ousting Brian France, who created the Chase and presided over the sports decline, was no small part of that. People love a winner, they love to hate a winner, and they love to see a dynasty get taken down. Lack of manufacturer identity may have been a reason some hardcore fans left the sport in the early 1990s, but that doesnt seem to me to be a valid reason for the sports popularity plunge since 2005. These figures paint a troubling trend that NASCAR is on a long term downtrend it has yet to recover from. You couldnt entirely blame NASCAR for no longer holding events in places like North Wilkesboro or Rockingham or even Darlington, which lost a race on the schedule for several years. That's the first time in a decade that that has happened, Hebrst said. U.S. NBA Social Justice Poll. WWE Insider Says Yes, Fans might be tired of the novelty of the playoffs., selling a sport that is losing popularity and has three months of overlap with football. ), and a race at the concrete venue of Nashville for the first time. Once upon a time, if the Cup series had a weekend off, drivers like Earnhardt Sr. and/or Earnhardt Jr. would go to Disney World and drink beer with NASCAR fans they bumped into in the lineup for A Small World. That's the lowest TV audience ever recorded for the. You may opt-out by. They wouldn't explain ratings declines from 2016 to 2017. TV ratings are no longer the end all be all for NASCAR. However, NASCAR has been taking major strides as the on-track product is improving, the schedule is being changed, bold decisions are being made, and communication between each party is better. The NASCAR ratings for the 2022 season are the best they have been in four years. No longer do young NASCAR racers start at their local tracks and work their way up. That doesnt mean they dont have talent, or arent brave. Advertising and sponsorship deals are the lifeblood of spectator sports, that is why the TV spots for the Superbowl are some of the most expensive in television. FOX has been touting the 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season to date as the "best ever." Sorry, I'd give that honor to 1992 and wouldn't even provide 2021 to date a spot on my top-10 list of modern-era. Now, they buy their way in. Last years season-opener at Barber only averaged 914 thousand viewers which is almost an extra 500 thousand. Its possible that the most popular driver not performing well hurt the sport, given the sports fan demographic. Stats. Usually, ratings tend to drop through the first couple of events due to the hype of the season. 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Photo credit: royal_broil on Best Running / CC BY-SA As the son of one of the greatest racecar drivers in history, Junior also had an impossible standard to live up to. Even though the Confederate battle flag was banned within Talledega Speedway on Sunday, outside the track, the initials "PC" stood for "publicly Confederate.". Yes, NASCAR actually believed an artificial points reset after two thirds of the season was the move that was going to catapult them past the NFL. (Photo by Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images), Samantha and son Brexton pose with the trophy after winning the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Championship at Homestead Speedway on November 17, 2019 in Homestead, Florida. Since early in the millenium, however, interest in NASCAR both at the speedways and on television has dropped off. This isnt to say that the initial Car of Tomorrow wasnt a disasterit wasbut at the time, fans were plenty vocal about safety after the loss of the sports biggest icon. Then they sharply declined in Week Two. Tiger Woods was great for golf. Photo credit: Zach Catanzareti Photo on Best Running / CC BY-SA, Posted in NASCAR, Sports Bowlesy thinks there needs to be an element of risk for racing to be exciting; I dont tune in to races to see a car potentially fly into a catch fence and injure spectators. Labor Day is in Darlington where it belongs, and Darlington is hosting two events again. While viewership was down overall, it should be noted that the share the percentage of homes tuned to the race in the average minute out of the total number of homes using televisions increased 8% from last year and 11% from 2019. The problem was the tracks that replaced themnearly all of them were characterless, cookie-cutter speedways where aero package ruled the day. These fans would attend a race, then go sightseeing around the town so as to make the trip more worthwhile and as a result, even more money is required to be put in the budget in order to cover the costs for a dew days hotel stay. The previous two races the Daytona Roval and Homestead-Miami posted double-digit increases over the same Cup Series stops last season, but those races had the benefit of moving up from the lower-rated summer portion of the schedule. Basicallythe first 2 races of 2015 have already soundly beaten the first 4 races of 2012 by 4.7 million viewers. Along with that came an all-important metric: the Nielsen ratings. In todays world TV ratings arent the big deal they once were nor the only thing that matters. Viewership and attendance of NASCAR have been on the decline ever since 2006, and some think the 2021 boost was only due to people seeking more outdoor activity . Its safe to say this is not ideal for the sport and there should be some concern on why ratings continue to fall. Formula 1 does not have a single commercial during their races on ESPN. Overall, it is another positive and negative week. Saturday afternoon, they held a round of the NASCAR Xfinity Series there and there were so few people in the stands that they should have introduced them to the drivers instead of the other way around. Covered race cars from the NASCAR Xfinity Series sit parked on pit road during a rain delay before the start . The presidential and general elections, which need to be held no later than June 18, come at a tough time for Erdogan who has seen a decline in his ratings because of skyrocketing inflation. For instance: The non-stop promotion of Danica Patrick, as if she was the Second Coming (she wasnt), turned off a lot of fans. It would have saved a lot of time. Oxford Gold . Well, it might be as easy as the product fans are seeing on their televisions over the course of a race. Yes, you had to be able to prove that you knew what you were doing out there but if your car passed technical inspection and you could either qualify to race through time trials or qualifying races, you were in. Which might explain why, despite the denials, the people who are descendants of Big Bill France, the man who started it all, are quietly shopping the company around and hoping to get out while the goings good. As a result, teams with more resourcessuch as Hendrick Motorsports and Roush Racingwon big for years. Atlanta has had some classics, but that was partly by virtue of the venue hosting the championship race, such as Alan Kulwickis unforgettable title win in 1992. The same story goes for NASCAR as the adverts that major companies place during their televised races are a major source of income for the organization and the teams. The markets simply couldnt support them anymore. NASCAR has struggled with the 18-49 demographic and while IndyCar doesnt have as many overall viewers, the percentage of those viewers being in that demographic is higher. Why poll the fans if youre just going to ignore them? Photo credit: balpeck on Best Running / CC BY-SA A leading business development, project manager in the auction and liquidation industry, and consultant for various local and national government offices in the Philippines. In the late '90s and the early 2000s, NASCAR saw an unprecedented growth in popularity and TV ratings. Feb 25, 2023, 2:33 AM. Speaking of disrespecting your fan base, how about needlessly putting an end to a beloved 54-year tradition? The Great Recession that swept across the landscape starting in 2008 changed everything. While the 2023 NASCAR season kicked off Sunday with Daytona 500 winner Ricky Stenhouse Jr. racing his way into the May 21 NASCAR All-Star Race, North Wilkesboro Speedway construction crews are . Photo credit: Zach Catanzareti Photo on Best Running / CC BY In NASCARs pre-1990s heyday, when it was still very much a regional sport, manufacturer identity was a big thing. He said its important to look at the bigger picture, a bigger picture that shows how media is consumed. In the FOX/NBC era of NASCAR TV (since 2001), Daytona 500 ratings peaked in 2006 on NBC with 19.4 million viewers and an 11.3 rating. Brandon Kochkodin. Sunday's NASCAR Cup Series race from Las Vegas averaged a 2.6 rating and 4.36 million viewers on FOX, marking the lowest rated edition of the race since it debuted in 1998 and the smallest audience since at least 2001 (viewership prior to 2002 was not available). The . Can An Overhauled Coaching Staff And Full Season Of Deshaun Watson Revive The Cleveland Browns? Much like Kyle Petty, he ultimately became more known for his good-guy personality and his lineage than for his achievements on the racetrack. NASCAR made an absurd amount of money with their television contracts in the 2000s, but that ultimately cost them a sizable chunk of the audience when networks were forced to make it worth their while. NASCAR averaged 4.570 million viewers for Sunday afternoon's event at Auto Club Speedway. NASCAR blew off fan demand for picture-in-picture commercial breakssomething theyve since embracedwhile Fox Sportss indifference to fans went completely unchecked. Mike Joy is an outstanding announcer, and it was never a big deal for a fan to mute Darrell Waltrips exponentially annoying boogity boogity boogity! at the green flag. [Nielsen estimates from ShowBuzz Daily 3.9]. Anyone who was watching then could tell you that wasnt unusual at all. Photo credit: brandonzeman on Visual Hunt / CC BY-SA https://t.co/Zf4L7g5im4 Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) July 10, 2018 NASCAR sits on an upward trajectory for the first time in a while. The Xfinity Series at Indianapolis had a rating of 0.67, with 1.249 million viewers, totaling more than F1 Pocono TV Ratings July 26, 2022 Photo credit: Zach Catanzareti Photo on VisualHunt.com / CC BY-SA IndyCars race at St. Petersberg was also up from 1.219 million viewers last season. In that race, caution flags were flown almost every ten laps for tire wear, as Jimmie Johnson limped to a victory. NASCAR moved away from tracks where drivers push and shove and fight both other racecars and the track, and moved to aero-dependent speedways where engineers in the garage determined winners. I was critical of the Chase in plenty of columns, but I felt like I really got the point across with this one about it. Photo credit: sidehike on VisualHunt / CC BY-SA In 1994, there were six events held at intermediate tracks of 1.5-2 miles in length. Las Vegas, by contrast, moved back from the coveted week after the Daytona 500. NASCAR did (and still does) market the possibility of spectacular wrecks. NASCAR averaged 4.570 million viewers for Sunday afternoons event at Auto Club Speedway. Im also someone who became a disenchanted former fan myself. The Nielsen ratings for NASCAR's most-watched races, such as The Daytona 500, have plummeted in recent years. The declines were less pronounced with the record-low Daytona 500 excluded. This ability to adapt however seems insufficient as NASCAR has recorded a staggering 50% viewership drop in the last 5 years along with substantial admission decline that has varied from 12 -30% percent from 2012 to 2018. More to the point: both sports need to be patient . All that said, the unveiling of the Car of Tomorrow in 2007 certainly didnt help. 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