NFLX (Photo by Robert Laberge/Getty Images), Nascar's TV Future May Or May Not Include Streaming Its Top Tier Races. . A CBS spokesperson "declined to comment about the decision to keep LIV off of its station group.". Photo credit: Zach Catanzareti Photo on Best Running / CC BY Photo credit: wjarrettc on Visual hunt / CC BY NASCAR averaged 4.570 million viewers for Sunday afternoon's event at Auto Club Speedway. So more people are tuned into Amazon prime or Netflix After years of seeing its once enormous audience dwindle to almost nothing, NASCAR is finally righting the ship. Is PNC Park The Best Ballpark in Baseball? The various platforms of social media have been a convenient and fast way to obtain information and entertainment on a particular sporting event. The coverage goes through the entire event. 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. And stage races have also not gone over well with purists. NASCAR sits on an upward trajectory for the first time in a while. Next years championship race will be held in Phoenix, and even though the 2020 race should draw a packed house of 42,000, or 7,000 more than the estimated crowd at Homestead, fans have said they dont like the racing at Phoenix as much. Photo credit: brandonzeman on Visual Hunt / CC BY-SA So 16% drop in terms of total TV consumption of those TVs that are actually tuned in over the last two years, NASCAR shares up 18%. You can contact him here or on the Sports Media Watch Twitter page. The 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season averaged 2.93 million viewers across FOX, FS1, NBC and NBCSN, down 4% from last year (3.06M), down 6% from 2019 (3.11M) and the least-watched season on record. Kyle Larsons win, which averaged 3.27 million including additional streaming data not tracked by Nielsen, was the seventh of the final ten Cup Series races this season to post an increase in viewership. It is now an elitist sport because only those who can afford to pay to play need apply. Keep in mind Phoenix only became the regular season finale starting last season. Covered race cars from the NASCAR Xfinity Series sit parked on pit road during a rain delay before the start . People love a winner, they love to hate a winner, and they love to see a dynasty get taken down. It took time, maybe too much time, but NASCAR is finally addressing the three biggest reasons for the decline of the sport. There's a catch, though. NASCAR star Bubba Wallace reacted to a chart on Twitter that showed last weekend's NASCAR race at Foxwoods Resort Casino as the top-watched sporting event of the weekend. NASCAR polled fans about the idea on their website following the 2003 season, and fans overwhelmingly rejected it. Nascar, long a symbol of Southern heritage, has become an unlikely battleground in the debate over whether the Confederate battle flag still has a place in America. I expect that will be a boon to NASCARs future. Those numbers of course, dont tell the entire story. 500 MOMENTUM:Daytona 500 TV ratings: NASCAR opener ends two-year viewership decline. I think thats some pretty solid footing.. After 26 of 36 races, the top ten drivers would have their points reset, putting them all on a level playing field again for the last ten races. Elliott is a great driver and a likable kid, and he doesnt take any craphe doesnt shy away from wrecking a driver like Denny Hamlin if the situation called for it. The drops: 10% in one year, 19% in two years, 38% in three years, and, good golly Miss Molly, 51% since 2015, when NBC picked up the second half of the season in a giant 10-year contract, with Fox doing the first half. And based on what we see today, NASCAR seems to be on an upward trajectory and shows no signs of slowing down. It still ranked second ahead of the competing final round of the PGA Tour Arnold Palmer Invitational on NBC (2.4, 3.86M). But the initial Chase, an artificial and contrived points reset, was despised by fans. Nothing against Jimmie Johnson for winning titles with the rules as written, but he only managed that feat twice. Since this is a non-ideological blog, I wont get into the things that the NFL, NBA and MLB have recently done to drive away a significant portion of their fanbases. At the start of the 21st Century NASCAR TV ratings, meant everything. These figures paint a troubling trend that NASCAR is on a long term downtrend it has yet to recover from. The. NBA players take a knee during National Anthem, screen image Get woke, go broke. Affluence. NASCARs initial playoff brainchild was hugely unpopular, and every griping fan in comment sections of blogs everywhere had the artificial points reset near the top of their list of complaints. (Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images). Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Three of the four drivers in the championship race were also in the 2018 race, and three of the four drivers were in Toyotas. As Ive said, the sport is finally addressing its venue problem. He pointed out that despite the ratings decline, NASCAR achieved a "double-digit share increase" last year. Where . Most notably, Sunday was an all-time low in viewership for the second race of a NASCAR season ever. It was blatant condescension towards what was arguably the most loyal fanbase in sports. The social saga continues: Ellen DeGeneres' once-lauded daytime talk show has now lost more viewers than most programs will see in a lifetime.. It's been a whirlwind couple of years for DeGeneres and her fans. There are still 11 races on intermediate tracks, but its finally moving in the right direction. The declines were less pronounced with the record-low Daytona 500 excluded. Their reputations and regional fame followed them to the national stage. Danica turned out to be a huge bustas many people who followed the sport closely, including yours truly, predicted she would be. NASCAR TV ratings were once the darlings of the sport. Hes tasked with not only getting exposure for the sport but measuring that exposure and translating in a way that shows value to stakeholders. By: GP Racing. 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. 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. While retired drivers still are visible within the world of NASCAR acting as team managers, commentators, or guests, without the familiar presence of these stars on the track, people can, and have lost some level of interest in NASCAR. Last years season-opener at Barber only averaged 914 thousand viewers which is almost an extra 500 thousand. By then, hardly anyone will have a standard TV, anyway, because every event will be streamed, and ratings wont matter. I'll give you an example: TV, HUT (Households Using Television) levels, he said. You also dont often see post-race fisticuffs after races at Kansas or Vegas like you might at Martinsville or Bristol. They are the only one of the Big 3 Motorsports that still have this happen. Sunday, when the big-league Monster Energy Series took the green flag, it was better but there were still an awful lot of empty seats. That NASCAR was doomed, soon to become nothing more than a memory. That marks a 10% decline compared to the year-ago 87.1 million viewers, and a 16% drop compared to the analogous period during the 2018-19 campaign. In NASCAR's pre-1990s heyday, when it was still very much a regional sport, manufacturer identity was a big thing. And abuse and manipulation of that system. Standings. This is the most viewed season-opener since 2015. The playoff system eliminates 25 or more drivers from contention with nearly a third of the season still to go. . Men in particular were more put. This article looks at several of the reasons why NASCAR is losing fans. While Nielsen was undergoing its transformation other smaller agencies stepped into fill the void. Ratings fell 19% and viewership 21% from last year, when it was the second race of the season (3.2, 5.50M). Stats. Sundays race at Auto Club is also down from the second race of the 2021 season. It was the first NCS race on the dirt in 50 years. Veterans like Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick are future Hall of Fame drivers with fairly large followings, and a strong crop of young drivers are making names for themselves. Fox reported a modest 2% increase in viewership of comparable Cup race from 2018 to 2019, but it needs to be noted that Foxs part of the schedule does not collide with NFL and college football, which NASCAR fans also enjoy watching. What other big American sport has ongoing action behind a commercial? Up until the middle of the 21st century the measured pairs of eyeballs watching NASCAR on TV were counted, analyzed and, for the most part, cheered. There are not many. Social impressions, social following, a positive buzz of our sport, which is measured by third parties, like at YouGov is up 2.5 X over the course of the last two to three years.. This brought even more attention and money to the sport and school was soon out. Please email the author at nmcdonald@thestar.ca, Copyright 2023 | Powered by CityMediaInc.com, Happy Birthday, GM Canada, and thanks for the (many) ride(s), Racing Roundup: Great Grand Prix in Austin, despite actions by stewards; Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame induction video; Alonso wont drive in IndyCar in 2019 or ever. Dr. Jon Lewis (aka Paulsen) has been covering the sports media industry on a daily basis since 2006 as the founder and main writer of Sports Media Watch. There's a lot of people that are looking around and understand that the economics of our sport probably are in a better place now than they've been in a long time.. NASCAR needs side-by-side commercials during green-flag racing and then full-screen commercials during yellow flags. More to the point: both sports need to be patient . Fox Sportss coverage was particularly abominable, with a seemingly endless parade of commercial interruptions mixed with the Ford Cutaway Car, the Home Depot Pit Crew Member, the Viagra Boner Of The Race, whatever, all during green flag racing. 2) When NASCAR established the franchise system in 2016, the league essentially became a closed shop. Drivers. Which is any sports property, essentially professional sports league, that is about a million viewers or higher on a per event basis or the most stable property in terms of viewership over the course of the last two years, it's possible that we'll be able to be the most stable tier one sports property in terms of sports viewership over the course of those three years, (though) the NFL is off to a very good start. With two races remaining after this weekend Phoenix next weekend and then the finale at Homestead-Miami this would seem to be as good a time as any to take a look at why the bloom has come off that NASCAR rose and why it is going to be almost impossible for it to ever regenerate. NBC did the best with what it was given, really, but there were few compelling storylines. Earlier this month, NASCAR said the Confederate flag no longer will be allowed at its events. Photo credit: eliduke on Visualhunt.com / CC BY-SA So to the extent that you can be flat or even up a couple of points it says a lot just about fan interest in the sport.. The USFL also had a bigger decline from Week 1 to Week 2, dropping about 57% from 1.57 million. Overall, it is another positive and negative week. Yes, all of those factors might have contributed to the decline of interest in NASCAR, But, in the end, I think the franchise system and the ride-buying are what did NASCAR in. It makes a world of difference watching on TV. The problem was the tracks that replaced themnearly all of them were characterless, cookie-cutter speedways where aero package ruled the day. Related: NASCARs NextGen car shows promise and one huge issue. With all the different metrics used to measure a sport these days however, it can be complicated. I dont need to tell anyone who was a fan in the 2000s this, but NASCARs broadcasts at the time may have been the worst in the history of sports. It may seem good on the surface, but theres more beneath that makes this concerning. In fact, the current car lends itself to some pretty good racing. In other NASCAR action, the Xfinity Series race at Las Vegas turned in a 0.7 and 1.28 million. NASCAR Fans Rebel Against Confederate Flag Ban. The IndyCar race at St. Petersberg averaged 1.405 million viewers on Sunday. In the early 2000s, NASCAR was soaring. Anyone who was watching then could tell you that wasnt unusual at all. The NASCAR season ended on a slightly better note in the ratings, though the season could not quite measure up. Far from it. It rewards winning and risk taking, where the Chase rewarded points racing and avoiding risk. NBC was slightly ahead of last years pace before the Nov. 10 race at Phoenix, but it drew 2.567 million, the least-watched Cup race on broadcast television since 2001 (not counting rainouts). That is a decrease of nearly 50%, and in some races this kind of decline could be seen in the stands too. NASCAR's viewership for the first half of the 2022 season is the highest since 2017. | Dale Earnhardt Jr. retired at the end of the 2017 season. Digital and social consumption is as important now, as it's ever been; probably more important now than it's ever been, he said. It was boxy, ugly, and top heavyand its shape was part of the reason for the Indianapolis debacle of 2008. NBC reported Monday that its broadcast of the NASCAR Cup championship race from Homestead-Miami Speedway in Florida drew an average of 3.759 million viewers, its best audience for its half of the season. 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 . Or Jeff Gordon, again, living in a Manhattan penthouse with his second wife, a model, instead of in North Carolina, where he lived beside a lake with his first wife, a deeply religious woman who was Born Again. NASCAR blew off fan demand for picture-in-picture commercial breakssomething theyve since embracedwhile Fox Sportss indifference to fans went completely unchecked. ), and a race at the concrete venue of Nashville for the first time. The decision . I have been around and covered NASCAR for over two decades. The fan base that is paying attention to our sport now than probably two or three years agopart of that is the economic model of our sport is a little bit more sounder, on solid footing; the introduction to the Next Gen car, it brings on new owners like Justin Marks and Michael Jordan, Pitbull et cetera. Just because no one has been killed at the Cup level since Earnhardts death doesnt make it less so. NASCAR did (and still does) market the possibility of spectacular wrecks. Its not so much that the points reset NASCAR introduced in 2004 was a monumentally stupid idea. NASCAR still attempts to do the best it can when it comes to getting the word out. Why poll the fans if youre just going to ignore them? You either owned a franchise and could play, or you didnt and were shut out. NASCAR's social media channels have piled up nearly 2 billion social impressions (the number of times its content was viewed) and more than 92 million fan engagements (retweets, likes, shares). 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