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Musings on a beautiful blue-sky weekend up on the north Texas plains....
Just another gorgeous afternoon in Fort Worth....so will these stands be filled for Sunday's Texas 500?(Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
By Mike Mulhern
mikemulhern.net
FORT WORTH, Texas
What's wrong with NASCAR?
Or is there really something wrong with NASCAR at all?
Maybe it is just the bad economy. And a run of bum luck.
But this sport was not so long ago the hot 'new' in-thing in the grand American psyche. Trendy even.
And now?
TV ratings aren't great any more, the sellouts aren't automatic, empty seats are out there for all to see.
Yes, we're all waiting to see if Jeff Gordon can break his Texas jinx….to see if Dale Earnhardt Jr. can get rolling again…to see Carl Edwards do another victory backflip…to see if David Reutimann, on the pole for Sunday's 1 p.m. CDT start at Texas Motor Speedway, can make something happen….and there are dozens of other stories-within-stories here for aficionados to follow.
But the two big stories are these:
-- First, there are all those clouds of uncertainty hanging over General Motors are making Chevy dealers -- like Gordon himself (http://www.jeffgordonchevrolet.com/aboutus/community.jsp in Wilmington, N.C.) – worried. "I keep close of tabs on it, as I do any of my investments," Gordon says. "That's an investment, and it's something that is a little bit more personal because I drive and race a Chevrolet. They've been incredible supporters of Hendrick and me for so many years."
-- Second, TV ratings. This market is one of the most important for NASCAR and its television partners, and this 500 is typically a bellwether event, with its huge grandstands. If rating here are again sluggish….
Of course Texas TV ratings haven't been all that spectacularly the last few years anyway. Maybe that 7.0 a couple years back was just a fluke. This race will likely draw something in the mid-5s, like usual, though it would be nice to a 6.0 come in.
Last weekend's Martinsville 500 drew only a 4.6 TV rating, down from last year's 5.3. And that continues a run of weak TV.
Is it the economy, is it the marketing, is it the product out on the track, is it the vanilla personalities?
Has the sport simply lost its allure? If so, why?
Maybe it's just chickens coming home to roost: Maybe, with NASCAR's explosive growth into so many new markets, sometimes at the expense of long-establish bases in the sport's heartland, too many hardcore fans have just faded away and are finding new things to do on Sunday.
Maybe if Dale Earnhardt Jr. were winning, the sport might be in better shape.
Maybe if the Daytona 500 hadn't been a rainy disaster….maybe if the California race hadn't been yet another bore (for 10 years now?)…maybe if Bristol had been a slam-bang affair….maybe if Martinsville weren't just 500 laps for 3-1/2 hours on a flat track…..
Maybe if Juan Pablo Montoya were winning, there might be some marketing punch.
Maybe if Jeff Gordon himself were winning….
Maybe if Jimmie Johnson weren't just a nice a guy….if he would just jump out of his car and go punch a teammate in the face on live TV…
And don't even get started on the car-of-tomorrow and all its problems – on the track and in the eye of many fans.
Has the sport of NASCAR somehow lost its way? Has it lost its edginess?
If so, how to fix it?
Maybe all NASCAR needs is a little fender-banging action, to catch fire again (Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR)
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I would say NASCAR has lost
I would say NASCAR has lost its way in about every thing possible. The racing series I started watching in 93 had cars that at least resembled the street ones,the drivers werent afraid to touch each other and give opinions, there were different varieties of tracks including the short track season,and when you put a guy a lap down,he stayed down unless he was really down a few and you'd be damned if you let a Jeff Gordon back on the lead lap at say Martinsville. Throw in the chase crap and the caution flags for foam rubber sprinkled in with rule discrepencies (seriously,at least wrestling is consistent) and I think that someone running Nascar thought that they could not possibly hurt what they did. Well,like you said Mike,the chickens have come home to roost and I think that with many tickets renewed the year before,2010 will be even worse. I personally gave up my Dover seats on the frontstretch and most likely my Michigan infield pass will go bye-bye not because of the economy,but because this is not the racing series I fell in love with years ago. If they cannot see that,then the fall for them will be more painful than what could be imagined.(Oh and bring back the Southern 500 on Labor Day---how hard can it be to undo that travesty?)
Now if you're going to write
Now if you're going to write about all the problems with NASCAR you should include how or whether the economy is affecting other sports, like the NBA, college basketball, and golf. Are their TV ratings down? Is their attendance down? Also what about the possibility that the way in which TNT and ESPN has handled their piece of the NASCAR broadcasts might have driven some fans away? NASCAR is far from perfect, but neither is the rest of the sports world.
Fair enough. Here are some
Fair enough. Here are some various TV Nielsen numbers:
-- NASCAR's 2009 season ratings (not including the Daytona 500) are averaging 5.4; that's down 12 percent from 2008's 6.1 average for the same five races. The Daytona 500 this year pulled a 9.2 rating, down 10 percent from 2008's 10.2.
-- The NCAA's Pitt-Villanova thriller pulled a 6.6 rating a few days ago. The 2008 NCAA Saturday evening semifinals pulled an 8.0, lowest in five years for the doubleheader. (This year's semifinal ratings won't be out for a couple of days.) The tournament itself so far this year has averaged a 5.3 rating, up slightly from 2008, but down from previous seasons.
-- Tiger Wood's PGA win last Sunday pulled a 4.4 (the best PGA showing since last summer's Open). NASCAR's Martinsville race the same day pulled a 4.6 (the lowest for that event since 2002, when it was on FX cable).
-- Last spring's Texas 500 pulled a 5.4.
-- Last year's NBA Finals (Celtics-Lakers) pulled a 9.3 rating, best since 2004 but still down from the 10s, 11s and 12s of earlier seasons. This year's NBA games are averaging a 2.5 rating, up from last season, and this could be the best regular season since 2004.
-- Fox' Saturday major league baseball games last season averaged 2.9 million viewers; ESPN's Sunday night baseball averaged 2.5 million viewers. The 2008 World Series (Tampa-Philadelphia, five games) averaged an 8.4 rating, with 13.6 million viewers; that's the lowest viewership in years. The 2001 Series (New York-Arizona, seven games) averaged 24.5 million viewers. Another benchmark, the 1980 series pulled in an average of 54.9 million viewers.
-- And some Super Bowl numbers. In 2009 it pulled a 42 rating on Fox, with 98 million viewers in 48 million homes; in 2008, a 43.1 rating (Fox); in 2007, 42.6 (CBS); in 2006 41.6 (ABC); in 2005, 41.1 (Fox).
The crowds (as best as we can
The crowds (as best as we can determine):
-- NASCAR's official post-race rundowns for the 36-race tour shows a season total attendance of 4.263 million for 2008: including 190,000 at Daytona; 25,000 for rain-delayed California; 153,000 for Las Vegas; 100,000 for Atlanta; 160,000 for Bristol; and 63,000 for Martinsville. For those first six events this season NASCAR reported crowd attendance of 180,000; 78,000; 140,000; 94,400; 160,000; and 63,000, an increase of four percent. (Curious point of reference: Goodyear, which used to provide estimates of crowds at NASCAR events, listed the total Winston Cup attendance for the 32-event tour in 1997 at 6,091,356.)
-- Washington last season led the NFL in attendance, with an average of 88,604 for its eight home games, up slightly from 2007's 88,090 average. The NFL drew a total of 17.5 million fans in 2008 (averaging 68,241 a game), down slightly from 2007's 17.6 million.
-- Detroit leads the NBA in attendance, with 830,000 people for its 38 home games, an average of 21,861. The top four markets: Detroit, Chicago, Portland and Dallas. The NBA in 2008-2009 has drawn 19,775,000.
-- Chicago leads the NHL in attendance, with 868,000 for its 39 home games, an average of 22,262. The top four markets: Chicago, Montreal, Detroit and Philadelphia.
-- Major League Baseball opens Sunday night April 5th. Last season the New York Yankees led the sport in attendance, with 4.3 million for its 81 home games, an average of 53,069, up slightly from 2007's average crowd of 52,729. Overall MLB games in 2008 drew 78.6 million, just off 2007's all-time record 79.5 million.
IT'S LACK OF WINNERS, LACK OF
IT'S LACK OF WINNERS, LACK OF LEAD CHANGES.
Give us more winning drivers and more winning teams, give us back 40-plus lead changes a race, and the fans will come back.
Pieman is misremembering 1993 - back then drivers were as afraid of touching one another as now, because (contrary to the myth) racing is not and never has been about beating and banging, it's about slicing and dicing, i.e. passing. The drivers kept their mouths shut for the most part as well - the ones who gave opinions were as insufferable then as they are now. The variety of tracks then wasn't particularly greater than it is now.
How had can it be to bring back the Southern 500? This hard - that demographic has dried up to where it only supports one race there. The sport needs to let it go - the old Southern 500 died.
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