" Action on track isn't helping NASCAR attendance, ratings "

[Don]

USA Today published a mid-year review, after 19 races. Changes introduced in 2009 and 2010 have not stopped the decline in attendance:

" Rubbing is racing. Popularized by the movie Days of Thunderdramatizing stock-car racing at its most cartoonish, the axiom might be the easiest way to explain NASCAR's rise from regional phenomenon to national platform.
"The bare essence of the sport is, 'He crashed me, so I crashed him back,' " TexasMotor Speedway president Eddie Gossage says. "That's the appeal."

But after a first half of the 2010 Sprint Cup season filled with slam-bang feuding — primarily the row between Carl Edwards andBrad Keselowski but also boiling between Kevin Harvick andJoey Logano— and unpredictable finishes, it hasn't caused a spike in the rooting interests of NASCAR. "


Attendance: ( after 19 races )

2003: 4,494,000
2010: 3,594,708

Reduction of 899,292 or 25% " Attendance is about the only thing not getting a bump; more tweaks possible "

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/motor...dance-tv_N.htm

[joyridin']

Maybe they need to make the tracks a figure 8? Seeing T-bone crashes at 180mph would spur a lot of action.

[Bill Bess]

I think it's really the economy that is causing lower attendance.

NASCAR fans love this stuff, fast cars, fights , crashes and yes, when they take out some A-hole that banged into you too many times. It's the same as football, the rougher the better.
I was glad to see Carl punch out that little mouthy Bad kid , and then to see his father wimp out after the race...poor baby.
Yeppy what a fun time.

[Ron61]

I agree with Bil in that I believe the economy is part of the problem. Several people from this area that used to go to the Fontana and Las Vegas races no longer go but stay home and watch them on TV. I really don't think the crashes have anything to do with the drop in attendance. Also some of the older fans no longer go to races and it is hard to really keep up with all of the driver and crew changes, so there is a mixture of foll lowing for any one driver. New fans who don't know any of the older drivers from past races are still trying to figure out who they want to root for.

Ron

[DougD]

NASCAR started it's decline when they decided to focus on the drivers, not the cars. In the distant past, fans came to see the Fords vs the Chevys vs the Dodges. They picked their favorite driver because he drove their favorite car make. Now the focus is on the drivers, and, let's be honest, they're all a bunch of pussies. No more Richard Pettys, Dale Earnhardts, Darrel Waltrips or Bill Elliotts. Even Jimmy Spencer was a lot more interesting that these current faceless wimps. Fans don't want the rules changed to even out the field. If your car's not competitive, then back to the drawing board. Don't change the rules to make it all fair. They want real cars, not the caricatures of cars we have now.

Here's how to fix it:
1) All rules changes occur in the off season. Build a car to the rules and race it. If you're not competitive, too bad. Try again next year.
2) Go back to real cars. Make them look like the ones we drive on the street. Remember "What wins on Sunday, sells on Monday"?
3) Get rid of all the mamby-pamby rules. If you're a lap down, you'll have to get it back the old fashioned way.

OK. Rant complete.

[Silverback51]

Nice rant Doug. I couldn't agree more.

[rustyBob]

I myself have never been to a NASCAR event.......not because i didnt want to go...just never had the chance or the funds to go.....I do attend the local races because there are 2 IMCA sanctioned tracks within 10 miles of my house.....i know what its like to sit in the stands with a bunch of one tooth booze hounds whos claim to fame is they can burp and fart at the same time while juggling two beers a cigarette and a big pile of nochos with extra halapino peppers.......now i only stay for a couple of hours till i cant stand it anymore and get up and go stand by the porta pottie to get some much needed fresh air(P.U.)......so i can only imagine what its like at a NASCAR event that lasts most of the day.....i"ll stay home and watch it on tv.

[Don]

* Economic conditions,using New Hampshire Speedway as an example.Due to the location, travel, lodging & food costs, upper level seating @ $110, but price has remained the same for a number of years. Expensive outing for a family
* An article mentioned, loss of the younger crowd
* Competition from other sporting events
* Sunday afternoon racing, would Saturday night attract a larger crowd, both on TV and attending ? At least for now with the tracks that have the lights for the track and parking.
* Shorter racers, is 1.5 to 2.0 hours sufficient ? For TV, viewership is higher for the first laps and again at the last 25 to 35 laps

The loss in TV viewers, maybe a fresh approach to the announcers, same story line over and over etc.

[Ron61]

Originally Posted by DougD

NASCAR started it's decline when they decided to focus on the drivers, not the cars. In the distant past, fans came to see the Fords vs the Chevys vs the Dodges. They picked their favorite driver because he drove their favorite car make. Now the focus is on the drivers, and, let's be honest, they're all a bunch of pussies. No more Richard Pettys, Dale Earnhardts, Darrel Waltrips or Bill Elliotts. Even Jimmy Spencer was a lot more interesting that these current faceless wimps. Fans don't want the rules changed to even out the field. If your car's not competitive, then back to the drawing board. Don't change the rules to make it all fair. They want real cars, not the caricatures of cars we have now.

Here's how to fix it:
1) All rules changes occur in the off season. Build a car to the rules and race it. If you're not competitive, too bad. Try again next year.
2) Go back to real cars. Make them look like the ones we drive on the street. Remember "What wins on Sunday, sells on Monday"?
3) Get rid of all the mamby-pamby rules. If you're a lap down, you'll have to get it back the old fashioned way.

OK. Rant complete.

Doug,

I agree with you. I watched a few minutes of the Indy practice for the Sprint cars and they have the bodies so sideways you can almost read the numbers on the drivers side door when they are coming straight at you. I to watch the start of the race and if it looks like another boring 4 hours of listening to the mouths in the booth, I watch something else until the last few laps of the race. Any wrecks or excitement they will show all week long on the various NASCAR shows anyway so I don't miss anything.

Ron

[Dirty Harry]

NASCAR's appeal seems to have been to the everyday working man, even blue collar fan. These are the folks that have been hurt most by the economic downturn. That is out of NASCAR's control.

What is under their control, though, are some of the things mentioned above. The cars are no longer representative of anything anyone would call a stock car. They don't resemble the brands they purport to be. With body templates and restrictor plates, it's basically another IROC series. I do love the safety of the new cars, but I miss the recognizable cars that used to compete. Drivers and skillful mechanics should determine the outcome of a race, not dynos and wind tunnels. At the restrictor plate tracks the first 80% of the race is simply holding your foot to the firewall and steering left. As long as the "big one" doesn't come sliding up over your hood, you'll be around to get in line wherever the draft permits and finish there, glad to have something to put back on the trailer. I prefer the tracks where the driver actually has to brake, accelerate, steer and counter steer, and pick his way through traffic, personally.

Sorry to rant.

[Ralphy]

I think the COT has a little to do with it. Also maybe Juniors fans are finally throwing in the towel!

Tony is not helping either. But the economy is truly number 1.

[Don]

Article: Another perspective on the declining attendance/TV viewers, note the comment “The biggest problem facing Nascar is that the young males have left the sport,”

" Young Viewers Depart, and Fewer Young Drivers Enter "By VIV BERNSTEIN

" When the green flag waved to start the Daytona 500 in February, marking the beginning of the Nascar Sprint Cup season, not a single rookie driver was in the 43-car field. The last time that happened? Never.

The Nascar rookie class of 2010 is virtually nonexistent, except for the unheralded, unrookie-like Kevin Conway, 31. Heading into Sunday’s race in Indianapolis, he is 35th in points driving for a small team that struggles to keep up with the multicar juggernauts of the sport.

Conway has no competition for the rookie of the year title. That is in part because Penske Racing’s Brad Keselowski, the most prominent first-year driver, is ineligible for rookie honors because he raced a partial schedule in 2009. But it is also part of a trend, with fewer competitive young drivers making an impact in recent years. The last time a high-profile team failed to produce a rookie of the year candidate was before the rise of megateams in the mid- to late 1990s.

It is perhaps a troubling precedent for Nascar, because it coincides with a decline in ratings in the all-important young male demographic. David Hill, the Fox Sports chairman and chief executive, recently said ratings among men 18 to 34 were down 29 percent from last year on Fox

“The biggest problem facing Nascar is that the young males have left the sport,” Hill told The SportsBusiness Journal in May after Fox’s 13-race schedule had been completed.

The timing of that exodus may not be a coincidence.

“Cultivating the next generation of fans is something that every league has to be worried about all the time, and to do that is to obviously have younger drivers that young fans can relate to,” said David Carter, the executive director of the Sports Business Institute at the University of Southern California. “In a sport that’s dominated by so many standard bearers, maybe it’s difficult to get young fans excited about anybody, especially some of these drivers that are twice their age.”

There are only three drivers under 30 in the Cup series top 20 in points and one of those, Denny Hamlin, will be 30 in November. That will make Kyle Busch, 25, and Joey Logano, 20, the lone top 20-somethings.

It did not used to be that way. A steady flow of young drivers helped fuel the sport’s growth in popularity in the 1990s and 2000s. Jeff Gordon was 21 when he began racing at the Cup level under Hendrick Motorsports in 1993, and won his first championship two years later. Gordon changed the development model by proving that a young driver could win races and titles right away.

Beginning in 1999 with Tony Stewart, Nascar had an annual infusion of new talent that quickly challenged for victories and titles. Matt Kenseth and Dale Earnhardt Jr. arrived in 2000, followed by Kevin Harvick and Kurt Busch in 2001, Jimmie Johnson and Ryan Newman in 2002, Greg Biffle in 2003, Kasey Kahne in 2004, Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards in 2005 and Denny Hamlin and Clint Bowyer in 2006.

Since then, Nascar rookies have not made as significant an impact. Juan Pablo Montoya, the 2007 rookie of the year at 32 after coming over from Formula One, and Logano, a highly acclaimed teenager who was rookie of the year last year, each won a race in their rookie seasons.

“We’re full of young drivers, very talented young drivers,” said Brett Bodine, Nascar’s director of cost research, who monitors the development of drivers through the various racing series. He sees plenty of talent at the lower levels.

But that talent is having a harder time moving up, in part because the earlier influx of young drivers has created a logjam of drivers in their 30s at the Cup level. And they’re not going anywhere. There’s another roadblock as well.

The premier drivers regularly compete in the lower-level Nationwide Series, which is supposed to be a feeder circuit. That makes it harder to find sponsorship for young unproven drivers like 19-year-old Trevor Bayne, who has 30 starts in the Nationwide series since last season, and 18-year-old Ryan Truex, who made his Nationwide debut on July 17.

“It feels like so many sponsors want just Cup drivers because it’s more about the marketing than it is about the developing,” said Ty Norris, vice president and general manager at Michael Waltrip Racing, which is developing Bayne and Truex. “So many quality cars are taken up by Cup drivers simply because the sponsors, given the amount of money it takes to run a Nationwide Series now, they want Cup celebrities in their racecars.”

The weak economy is limiting opportunities, too. Aric Almirola, 26, once a prospect at Joe Gibbs Racing, was supposed to have a full-time ride in the Cup series with Earnhardt Ganassi Racing in 2009. But a lack of sponsorship cost him, and he is now racing two levels down in the Camping World Truck Series.

It could be a long wait.

“The owners in the various series can’t afford to invest millions of dollars in the development of these younger drivers in the absence of a general economic recovery,” said Geoff Smith, the president of Roush Fenway Racing and one of several teams with driver development programs.

The soaring cost of competition led Nascar to bar testing among Cup teams in recent years. That might have saved teams some money but cost them in driver development. Without an opportunity to test extensively at tracks on the Cup schedule, younger drivers no longer have the chance to gain experience.

“There are drivers that have a shot at getting to the Cup level if they were able to test and do those things, and at this point, they’re not,” Keselowski said.

Smith said he thought young drivers would have a negotiating edge down the road as teams seek to shed more costly veterans when filling seats.

“You need young drivers to keep coming through,” Ryan Truex said, “or you’re going to run out of ’em eventually and have a bunch of old dudes running around.” "

[Dan40]

For the Daytona race I saw adds here for $40.00 tickets, official tickets, not distressed tickets. I remember years ago when they were $75.00

[Wayne Maybury]

It is a very interesting point that there are no rookies in the Cup this year. I can understand younger folks not being able to relate to all of the older drivers.

COT, I hate the name. If anything this is a car of yester-year, not tomorrow. Having said that, I surely do appreciate the safety aspects of this car. It is absolutely amazing how this thing can roll end-over-end at 150+ mph and the driver just walks away.

My major complaint with NASCAR is all of the unnecessary cautions that have much more to do with the sponsors running ads on TV while all of the cars get tires & gas, than they have to do with safety. Also the most stupid rule in all of organized car racing has to be the lucky dog rule. Unfortunately, NASCAR has become more of a show than a racing series.

Wayne

[Bartruff1]

As a fan, I go back to the beach in the 50's.....to me, they should go back to stock car racing....the hero drivers will emerge anyway...eg Petty, Flock, Fast Freddy Lorenzon, Fireball, etc... IMHO the last "close to stock car racing" with factory participation and world class drivers was Trans Am... damn I loved that ...real racing with real cars ...actual shifting and braking and accelerating on road courses...those were the days and those cars are still popular in Historic Racing...

[Dan40]

Where does one buy one of those front V-8 engined, carborated, rear wheel drive Toyota sedans? What option package do you have to get that includes the spoiler and the splitter. Does the "shark fin" come as an extra option or is it included. Maybe its a dealer installed item????

[Ron61]

Originally Posted by Bartruff1

As a fan, I go back to the beach in the 50's.....to me, they should go back to stock car racing....the hero drivers will emerge anyway...eg Petty, Flock, Fast Freddy Lorenzon, Fireball, etc... IMHO the last "close to stock car racing" with factory participation and world class drivers was Trans Am... damn I loved that ...real racing with real cars ...actual shifting and braking and accelerating on road courses...those were the days and those cars are still popular in Historic Racing...

I agree that those days were the best. I really liked the old Trans Am series. And the real cars which weren't as safe as they are today, but the racing was much better I thought. Whoever could make their car go the fastest and handle the best won which is the way it should be. I feel NASCAR is also hurting themselves with all of the various TV shows they have on.

Ron

[Wayne Maybury]

Originally Posted by Ron61

I feel NASCAR is also hurting themselves with all of the various TV shows they have on.

Ron

Ron, I cannot believe that some talking heads can go on, and on, and on for hours and hours every week talking about a race. They end up turning me right off. Some of the new NASCAR shows on Speed really suck.

I do enjoy listening to Dave Despain as he brings up some very interesting points. He has some good interviews and lastly, he discusses much more than just NASCAR.

Wayne

[Ron61]

Wayne,

His show is the only one that I watch. The rest are just a bunch of people rambling on and on about the same thing over and over. I watch the other races on Speed but that is about it for me and speed channel.

Ron

[Don]

From USA TodaY:

" The crowd didn't measure up to the event's luster. NASCAR's estimated attendance was 140,000, but the 275,000 seat grandstands appearred less than full. The Brickyard's listed crowd has fallen by 100,000 since a tire debacle in 2008 "

The 140,000 attending may or may not have included the RV area and infield parking. Either way, whatever NASCAR is contemplating to reverse the downward trend sure needs immediate attention. Won't have the words exactly right, " it's easier to maintain/retain the favorable status than gaining back that which has been lost "