BLOGGER TEMPLATES AND TWITTER BACKGROUNDS

Saturday, October 10, 2009

My Thoughts on Why Nascar TV Viewership is Down

Nascar race TV viewership is down for the whole year. A brief review of Nascar history shows that the Chase was created to generate more TV viewership, more at track attendance and to generate excitement for the sport. Brian France instituted the Chase after Matt Kenseth won the Championship with a runaway points lead.

This year it does not appear to be working. In theory, home viewership should be up: with the economy the way it is, at track attendance should be down as more people stay home to watch the races.

So why are the numbers falling? There are several reasons, some which Nascar cannot fix, but others that could be tweaked to gain back viewers.

Things Nascar Can Fix:

1. Overhype of the Chase. Starting with the Daytona 500, all we hear about is the Chase. The NFL does not hype the Super Bowl this way throughout the year, MLB doesn't hype the World Series this way, and neither should Nascar. We all know it is coming. And we all know that it is too early to talk about in the first couple races. Knock it off. In fact, it should not be hyped until we are within 3 races of the Chase's start, and then only sparingly. Save the PR until we have a field set.

2. Overhype during the Chase. Watching the first race in the Chase, the announcers act like every lap is vitally important in the Chase. "If Gordon doesn't pass Stewart soon, he'll drop all the way to third in the Chase." And it's lap #3! When something catastrophic happens, then let us know how it impacts the Chase.

3. Ignoring Non-Chase drivers. While the drivers having the best year are in the Chase and are likely to be up front, there still are 30 other guys out there. Talk about them, and not just when they (nearly) crash into a Chaser.

4. Tweak the Rules to get into the Chase. I'm fine with an arbitrary number of drivers, but let's look at the line. Change the rule to top 12 plus any race winning drivers within 100 points of #12. Some years this may be no one, and others it may be a couple guys. But if a team pulled it together enough to be within 100 points of the top 12 AND won a race, let them in.

5. Uniform Start times: I applaud Nascar for deciding on uniform start times. I think they may actually listen to the fans once in a while.

6. Fix the schedule: We have too many races. Trim a few by adding a rotation of tracks - instead of 2 races per year, Track #1 gets one race plus one race in odd years. Track #2 gets the other race in even numbered years. The Chase races should include a bigger variety of tracks. Why not Sonoma? Bristol? Richmond?

Things Nascar Can't Fix:

1. Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s past few seasons have not gone well. Despite the high hopes after his signing at Hendrick Motorsports, Dale Jr. has failed to deliver consistent finishes and wins. That hurts viewership when your most popular driver isn't in the Championship. Do you think Michael Jordan would have been as legendary if he had never played in the Championship games? The same applies here.

2. Jimmie Johnson's domination. Johnson has schooled the field each of the past three years. Before that, he was in contention up until the last race. Frankly, many long time fans I know are bored with the Chase because they expect Johnson to win it all. They are not excited about the Chase. Maybe when Johnson retires they will be back.

3. Football: Probably the biggest thief of viewers is football. College and NFL games lure away marginal & dedicated fans.

Nascar needs to look at its product and make a few changes. Otherwise, the decline of viewers will lead to a decrease in revenue as the TV package will not be worth as much as it did a few years ago.


8 comments:

tezgm99 said...

my biggest beef is that the commentators insist of describing every single part of the car every race. Baseball doesn't do that, NFL doesn't either and nor does the NHL. I watch the races for the race, I don't really care why a car slid, or why the gearbox blew up.

Tsfanpc said...

IowaGirl all of your observations are right on the money. Couple more things that NASCAR needs to address is the length of the races and how many races there are.

Maybe it is time that NASCAR reduces the length of some of their races, like Pocono, and California. 500 miles at these two tracks is way too long. Reducing it to 300 miles at Pocono and 400 at California will be more than enough at these two tracks.

And if NASCAR really wants to take advantage of viewers, set it up so that the season ends in late September or early October. Running into November is just testing the patiences of the fans. By November, we are just like let this season be over. So we can go onto something else.

jon_464 said...

Iowa-Girl, you're spot on. I think trimming the schedule to 30 races would be a good start. Lose one of the Pocono dates and reduce the mileage to 400 miles for the other date. I'm going to have a post up in the near future about a 30-race schedule that starts at the Daytona 500 and would end in September.

photogr said...

NFL and College Football is the big reasons. Of course you are right in mentioneing the France family lack of knowledge of what the fans want.

NASCAR has actually brought the excitement of racing to a predictable mele of boredom for most of the race.

Annette said...

Tez - It is annoying, but I do think that some of the newer fans like it explained to them. It would help if that weren't their only segment during the race!

TSFan - I agree on the length of the Pocono races - they are way too long. I don't think aside from the Daytona 500 and the Coca-Cola 600 there should be a race over 400. In a pinich, I may agree that Bristol could be 500 laps.

Jon - Can't wait to read it!

Photo - They have dumbed it down too much!

Forensic2 blog said...

Great fix's IowaGirl,, Add some more.

The Chase came about when the last 3 races of Viewership drop big time that year of Matt Kenseth winning it. THE NETWORK just purchased covering the races at big money with paper work, graphs etc that NASCAR was growing with no end in sight. NASCAR WAS WRONG! The chase came in to make the network happy as if this would fix it. (( Dope ))

All it did was garuntee Jimmie Johnson would win 3 championships in a row cause for the most10 tracks the 48 team wins. FIX IT, Put more tracks like Daytona & a road course should be in the 10 races. This last race was all Jimmie,, Jimmie stop at the porta potty, he blew his nose, etc etc.lol Mark Martin lead in points till this last race but you hardly ever heard about it. WHY? Cause Lowe's sponsor the race and NASCAR...Hint to why those are the 10 tracks?

The new tracks sold out at first, the new fans came and saw what all the hype was some got it and most didn't never to return. The networks are the big reason in viewers ship is dropping out.

Cheers2You

Gene Haddock said...

All great points, IG. NASCAR did listen to some kind of fan forum they have, where most of them said they didn't know when the races started from week to week. So NASCAR changed it.

The fans also made enough buzz for NASCAR to institute the double file restarts in mid-season this year.

NASCAR now thinks that JPM winning the title would be great for world wide pub. Why would they think it's good for your champ not to have a win? I would love for Montoya to win the title, while not winning a race.

jmayer1843 said...

Interesting points. I like your part about overhyping during the Chase. It's comical when you think about it that way. However, I don't agree with shortening the schedule. I know I am in the minority on this opinion, but if they races 52 weeks a year I would watch all 52 races. I hate the offseason.