The Fall of NASCAR
Posted: November 29th, 2018, 11:26 am
[font=Calibri]A topic that is maybe something new to discuss on this board but I feel like is very interesting in the sports world. The Sports Business Journal is reporting a 700,000 viewer drop for the sport in 2018 as compared to just a year earlier in 2017. Now to be fair, Dale Earnhardt Jr did retire at the end of the 2017 season but the sport has lost over 5,000,000 viewers since 2005. What was once one of the most thriving sports in the entire country and had corporations salivating at dropping $20-$30 million a year to get their name on the side of a race car is now nothing but a shell of its former self.[/font]
[font=Calibri] [/font]
[font=Calibri]The TV viewers may even be the least of the concerns. The 2017 NASCAR Cup Series championship race team, Furniture Row Racing, has closed their doors due to lack of sponsorship. Jimmie Johnson, the 7 time NASCAR Champion, lost his Lowe’s sponsorship and it took them around 6 months to find a corporation to replace that sponsorship. Target, Lowe’s, Home Depot, Coors Light, Sprint, Subway, GoDaddy, Dollar General, National Guard, Army, 5-Hour Energy, and countless others who were once staples in funding this sport are nowhere to be found at a racetrack. Richard Petty’s owned car spent a majority of the season with a primary sponsor. Roush Fenway Racing that spent much of the 1990s and 2000s as the most dominate team in the sport had to go pluck Matt Kenseth out of retirement to get sponsorship for many races throughout the second half of the season. Monster Energy is entering their final year as a Title Sponsor of the series and NASCAR has already announced they are moving on from a title sponsorship due to lack of interest and instead offering sponsorship “tiers” for interested corporations.[/font]
[font=Calibri] [/font]
[font=Calibri]The most troubling issue of them all is the attendance. Now when the attendance issues really started to become noticeable about 10 years ago, NASCAR wanted to point at the same issues that are facing other sports. Yes, MLB and College Football and even the almighty NFL do not see the demand for tickets they did a decade ago but those sports are much more regionally based. A Pirates fan still probably is going to watch and track the Pirates. Instead of watching 5 games in person and 150 games on the couch, they may watch 3 games in person and 152 games on the couch. At the end of the day, they are still watching and the money will funnel back to MLB and the Pirates one way or another. But in NASCAR, it is a little different. It is a national touring series so the series only takes one trip to New England a year. They head to Chicago, once. Even in their “heartland” of the Carolinas, they only have about 6 events per year. So when fans aren’t showing up, you really begin to wonder where they may be at. Additionally, many NASCAR fans will tell you they fell in love with the sport at the track. Football broadcasts well but it is hard for your TV screen to show you what 195 mph looks like, along with the sounds, smells, and ability to see multiple points of action along the track at once. NASCAR is a very difficult sell without seeing the event in person a few times to truly understand what is happening throughout an event.[/font]
[font=Calibri] [/font]
[font=Calibri]So let’s look at their attendance, well we can’t because they don’t release attendance statistics any longer. They stopped announcing attendance in 2012 but I can tell you this. I have been going to the Bristol Night Race for 20 years. 10-15 years ago the alternative market value of each ticket was $800-$1,000 a seat in our section. They would get 70,000 to the undercard (Busch series at the time) event the night before the main event (Cup series race). I went to that same race this year. They had dozens of sections tarped off. I got a free ticket with the purchase of a video game. The tickets I bought for my family were $60 for the best seats at the track and I bought them 2 weeks before the event. It was a gorgeous summer night and they may have had 60,000 people there. [/font]
[font=Calibri] [/font]
[font=Calibri]Here is the craziest thing, taking information from Jayski’s silly season website in 2013 (which many tracks have done major seat reductions since) here is some statistics of how drastically tracks are removing seats. Charlotte Motor Speedway was once 156,000 seats and they are now 41,000. Dover was once 135,000 seats and they are now 85,000. Talladega was once 143,000 seats and they are now 80,000. Richmond was once 110,000 at capacity and it now is at 50,000. The worst part is even with severe capacity reductions at almost every track they still struggle to get these venues half full.[/font]
[font=Calibri] [/font]
[font=Calibri]Many close to the sport are beginning to wonder if the sport will even survive another decade. If there are any NASCAR fans, or past NASCAR fans, or casual observers on the board, what do you see as the greatest cause of the fall of this sport? I mean it is really astonishing how quickly this sport has fallen from the prosperity that they once had.[/font]
[font=Calibri] [/font]
[font=Calibri]The TV viewers may even be the least of the concerns. The 2017 NASCAR Cup Series championship race team, Furniture Row Racing, has closed their doors due to lack of sponsorship. Jimmie Johnson, the 7 time NASCAR Champion, lost his Lowe’s sponsorship and it took them around 6 months to find a corporation to replace that sponsorship. Target, Lowe’s, Home Depot, Coors Light, Sprint, Subway, GoDaddy, Dollar General, National Guard, Army, 5-Hour Energy, and countless others who were once staples in funding this sport are nowhere to be found at a racetrack. Richard Petty’s owned car spent a majority of the season with a primary sponsor. Roush Fenway Racing that spent much of the 1990s and 2000s as the most dominate team in the sport had to go pluck Matt Kenseth out of retirement to get sponsorship for many races throughout the second half of the season. Monster Energy is entering their final year as a Title Sponsor of the series and NASCAR has already announced they are moving on from a title sponsorship due to lack of interest and instead offering sponsorship “tiers” for interested corporations.[/font]
[font=Calibri] [/font]
[font=Calibri]The most troubling issue of them all is the attendance. Now when the attendance issues really started to become noticeable about 10 years ago, NASCAR wanted to point at the same issues that are facing other sports. Yes, MLB and College Football and even the almighty NFL do not see the demand for tickets they did a decade ago but those sports are much more regionally based. A Pirates fan still probably is going to watch and track the Pirates. Instead of watching 5 games in person and 150 games on the couch, they may watch 3 games in person and 152 games on the couch. At the end of the day, they are still watching and the money will funnel back to MLB and the Pirates one way or another. But in NASCAR, it is a little different. It is a national touring series so the series only takes one trip to New England a year. They head to Chicago, once. Even in their “heartland” of the Carolinas, they only have about 6 events per year. So when fans aren’t showing up, you really begin to wonder where they may be at. Additionally, many NASCAR fans will tell you they fell in love with the sport at the track. Football broadcasts well but it is hard for your TV screen to show you what 195 mph looks like, along with the sounds, smells, and ability to see multiple points of action along the track at once. NASCAR is a very difficult sell without seeing the event in person a few times to truly understand what is happening throughout an event.[/font]
[font=Calibri] [/font]
[font=Calibri]So let’s look at their attendance, well we can’t because they don’t release attendance statistics any longer. They stopped announcing attendance in 2012 but I can tell you this. I have been going to the Bristol Night Race for 20 years. 10-15 years ago the alternative market value of each ticket was $800-$1,000 a seat in our section. They would get 70,000 to the undercard (Busch series at the time) event the night before the main event (Cup series race). I went to that same race this year. They had dozens of sections tarped off. I got a free ticket with the purchase of a video game. The tickets I bought for my family were $60 for the best seats at the track and I bought them 2 weeks before the event. It was a gorgeous summer night and they may have had 60,000 people there. [/font]
[font=Calibri] [/font]
[font=Calibri]Here is the craziest thing, taking information from Jayski’s silly season website in 2013 (which many tracks have done major seat reductions since) here is some statistics of how drastically tracks are removing seats. Charlotte Motor Speedway was once 156,000 seats and they are now 41,000. Dover was once 135,000 seats and they are now 85,000. Talladega was once 143,000 seats and they are now 80,000. Richmond was once 110,000 at capacity and it now is at 50,000. The worst part is even with severe capacity reductions at almost every track they still struggle to get these venues half full.[/font]
[font=Calibri] [/font]
[font=Calibri]Many close to the sport are beginning to wonder if the sport will even survive another decade. If there are any NASCAR fans, or past NASCAR fans, or casual observers on the board, what do you see as the greatest cause of the fall of this sport? I mean it is really astonishing how quickly this sport has fallen from the prosperity that they once had.[/font]