Sundays race at Auto Club is also down from the second race of the 2021 season. Compared to Week 2 of last year's USFL, which consisted of two games on broadcast and two on cable, the XFL's Week 2 audience was down just slightly (661K to 655K). You also dont often see post-race fisticuffs after races at Kansas or Vegas like you might at Martinsville or Bristol. And you hear more and more about this today. UPDATE: The Daytona 500 posted only a modest decline in ratings and viewership, but that was still enough to make it one of the least-watched ever. NASCAR Las Vegas ratings hit a new low. Having followed the sport in the time frame when it began, I can offer what I believe are the real reasons for the decline of NASCAR. NASCAR TV ratings were once the darlings of the sport. Schedule/Results. By then, hardly anyone will have a standard TV, anyway, because every event will be streamed, and ratings wont matter. AEW Dynamite Results: Winners And Grades On March 1, 2023, Celta Vigo Star Gabri Veiga Is Alerting Wealthy Teams In The Premier League, Trade Madness: Knicks, Nets, Rangers, Islanders And Devils Spent February Making Notable Moves, Los Angeles Chargers Have Shown Keenan Allen The Money But They Wont Show Him The Door, Corner Threes Are Secret Sauce For Milwaukee Bucks Offensive Success, OKC Thunder: Upcoming Six-Game Slate Will Dictate Direction Of Season, Is Vince McMahon Secretly Booking WrestleMania 39? Just ten years later, there were 13 such eventsnearly half the schedule. 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). 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. While Nielsen was undergoing its transformation other smaller agencies stepped into fill the void. The NASCAR season ended on a slightly better note in the ratings, though the season could not quite measure up. Young fans want to watch the action. If they hadnt, youd probably be reading articles today about the decline of Coca-Cola too. But plate racing still sucksnot only do plates produce multi-car crashes every event, they pervert the standings because of it. | People do not want to watch numerous full-screen commercials while green-flag racing is taking place. This is the most viewed season-opener since 2015. A Former Reporters Thoughts, Copyright 2023 A Great Number of Things. Feb 25, 2023, 2:33 AM. Three of the four drivers in the championship race were also in the 2018 race, and three of the four drivers were in Toyotas. Unless you are a die-hard fan of the sport, people would rather watch condensed snippets of the race or read the highlights instead of actually spending time watching or subscribing to NASCAR real-time races. The erosion is even more pronounced when you . No longer do young NASCAR racers start at their local tracks and work their way up. Last Sundays Cup Series finale from Phoenix averaged a 1.95 rating and 3.21 million viewers on NBC, up 4% in ratings and 5% in viewership from last year (1.9, 3.06M) and the highest rated and most-watched fall Phoenix race since 2018 (2.0, 3.31M). Ousting Brian France, who created the Chase and presided over the sports decline, was no small part of that. . By Jack Davis June 22, 2020 at 8:10am. Now, they buy their way in. . Furthermore, their retirements are probably not the sole reason for NASCAR's viewership issues either. I think that the momentum is good. Games on TNT are also down by more. There are not many. NASCAR power rankings during the 2023 season, NASCAR odds: Betting lines for each race and championship futures, NASCAR ratings on big rise compared to recent years in 2022, NASCAR standings: Cup, Xfinity, and Truck points during the 2023 season, Share up 9%, largest for Race #2 since 2017, Share up 2%, largest for Daytona 500 since 2016, Second most-watched non-points race since 2016. 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 . ), and a race at the concrete venue of Nashville for the first time. However, like Johnsons dominance, I doubt that this would have been as much of a problem were it not for other factors that were far more damaging. And while some ran their own cars, most were independent contractors who had their expenses paid by their car owner and then split the winnings (that division of money was usually 60-40) with said owner, who paid the bills. Dynasties like Johnsons arent bad for a sportunless the sport doesnt know how to market them. Weekly races at smaller locales have come off even worse. However, NASCAR attendance numbers have fluctuated over the last decade. 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.. LOS ANGELES, CA - MARCH 14: (L-R) Brian Herbst, NASCAR managing director, broadcasting, Scott Warfield, NASCAR managing director, social and digital content, Brad Keselowski, driver of the #2 Team Penske Ford Fusion, Jill Gregory, NASCAR senior vice president and chief marketing officer and Laura Froelich, Twitter global head of sports partnerships, pose for a photo after NASCAR announces plans to live-stream in-car cameras on Twitter for the 2018 season on March 14, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. It's no secret that NASCAR is experiencing a variety of issues related to its popularity, despite a slight recent uptick in TV ratings. Photo credit: balpeck on Best Running / CC BY-SA But the sports most dedicated fans were (and are) still in the Southeast, and Southerners are loyal to the core to their heritage. From their colorful beginnings to what is now a billion-dollar sporting event, NASCAR has continued to provide high octane entertainment for its millions of fans and supporters. NASCAR scraped bottom. All eight CBS-owned CW affiliates have "declined to air" LIV Golf's tournaments, according to Rice & Hayes of DEADLINE. The XFL's ratings were disappointing in Week One. Auto Club Speedway's racetrack seems to be adored by every . Mark Martin has the best take on the decline in NASCAR attendance, ratings Comment Leave it to one of the coolest customers ever to sit behind the wheel in NASCAR to come up with an. What are the biggest differences between these sports? 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. Related:15 Abandoned And Forgotten NASCAR Race Tracks. If that contributed to NASCARs decline, however, that is on NASCAR. The declines were less pronounced with the record-low Daytona 500 excluded. It may be difficult for younger people to imagine it, but the sport was once poised to overtake the NFL in popularity. Stats. 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 Related: NASCAR ratings on big rise compared to recent years in 2022. And I said all that without even bringing up that profoundly irritating cartoon gopher. Then they sharply declined in Week Two. I think thats some pretty solid footing.. Drivers. It took quite a few years of longtime fans bitching about that, but NASCAR did finally move the Labor Day Southern 500 back to Darlington. I hope so. No longer tied to a box atop the TV or a diary that viewers filled out, the company started to figure out how to report who was watching on TV, on cable, and on streaming platforms. NASCAR still attempts to do the best it can when it comes to getting the word out. But there is a big difference between changing your own spark plugs and battling your way to the front at your local speedway in hopes of catching the attention of a NASCAR car owner and calling up that same NASCAR car owner on the phone and saying two words to him: How much?. I have reasons to believe that NASCAR can return to previous levels of popularitymaybe not on the verge of overtaking the NFL again, but at least back to a point where they have enough of a dedicated fanbase to be a solid performer in ratings and ticket sales. but the mainstream media claiming the political/social justice shift in sports has nothing to do with the decline in viewership are whistling past the graveyard. which is a 50 percent decline . The XFL also had a better Week 2 performance than the 2019 Alliance of American . NASCAR is clearly falling behind other motorsports in a new era of television. Nepotism isnt dead in NASCAR. 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. We all know what Im talking about. And based on what we see today, NASCAR seems to be on an upward trajectory and shows no signs of slowing down. Its not so much that the points reset NASCAR introduced in 2004 was a monumentally stupid idea. You can contact him here or on the Sports Media Watch Twitter page. Ill submit that this is a reason a few fans I know stopped watching the sport. By virtue of his fathers untimely passing, Dale Earnhardt Jr. instantly found himself with a larger fan base than any three drivers in NASCAR. Even though the Confederate battle flag was banned within Talledega Speedway on Sunday, outside the track, the initials "PC" stood for "publicly Confederate.". OutKick reported: The NBA ratings are worse These Are The Reasons Why NASCAR Is Losing Fans, "Bootleggers"- those whoproduce anddeliver prohibited whiskey/alcohol, colorful beginnings to what is now a billion-dollar sporting event, 15 Abandoned And Forgotten NASCAR Race Tracks, 15 Rules Every NASCAR Employee Has To Follow, 10 NASCAR Drivers With The Most Wins (& How Much They Won), A New Toyota Celica Concept Shows What A Pure Toyota Sports Car Could Be Without BMW, A Modern Plymouth Road Runner Like This Could Shake Up Today's Pony Car Market, EXCLUSIVE: This Toyota 2000GT Rendering Brings An Icon Into Modern Day, The 5 Worst Ford Mustangs To Buy Used (Plus The 5 Best), 10 Used German Performance Cars We'd Buy Over An American Muscle Car Any Day. Gordon scored the most points overall of any driver in 2004, 2007, and 2014. [Nielsen estimates from ShowBuzz Daily 11.9, network PR]. Translation: the drivers are paying for the pleasure of racing. This year's Daytona 500, for example, drew 4.8 million viewers a. 500 MOMENTUM:Daytona 500 TV ratings: NASCAR opener ends two-year viewership decline. or Disney plus; there's more competition for those eyeballs then there's ever been. Photo credit: Zach Catanzareti Photo on Visualhunt / CC BY-SA Photo credit: PDA.PHOTO on Best Running / CC BY-ND There was massive progress in viewership all around and there are many factors that might be going into it. We try to do is take the complex and boil it down to something that is more easily understood by the fanbase.. 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. In that race, caution flags were flown almost every ten laps for tire wear, as Jimmie Johnson limped to a victory. 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. Yes, a team can still dominate all season and lose a championship to a flat tire, but at least its not just an artificial points reset. (Photo by Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images). The move of the Labor Day race to California was part of an ongoing trend. Next:10 NASCAR Drivers With The Most Wins (& How Much They Won). It was during this timethat "Bootleggers"- those whoproduce anddeliver prohibited whiskey/alcohol also had modified delivery cars that were fast enough to be able to evade, outrun and escape law enforcement should they be spotted. It was the first time in a while where we didn't have a decline on NBC. Yet instead of focusing their marketing on Johnsons unequaled supremacy, NASCAR chose to put all of their marketing eggs into the Danica Patrick basket, believing a swimsuit model who could drive a racecar would save the sport. Far from it. That NASCAR was doomed, soon to become nothing more than a memory. With his brilliant head wrench Chad Knaus on the pit box, the #48 team for years remorselessly laid the field to waste when playoff time started. Where . Basicallythe first 2 races of 2015 have already soundly beaten the first 4 races of 2012 by 4.7 million viewers. The broadcasts really were over-saturated with ads enough to drive fans away. NASCAR Home. Related:15 Rules Every NASCAR Employee Has To Follow. 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