Opinion: NASCAR Suffering from Brand Over-Exposure

Sunday’s Aaron’s 499 at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama was a terrific race, featuring a pack of cars just about glued together for the entire race distance. You could throw a blanket over the field, cars stacked three and four wide, ten or twelve rows deep, with no room for error. At times, forty-one cars were separated by less than a second. It was scintillating racing, in front of packed grandstands.

Yet, for the noticeable uptick in crowds at Talladega, there was a decline in television ratings, which continues a worrying tuned for NASCAR and it’s broadcaster, FOX. Sunday’s telecast was the lowest-rated Talladega spring race since 1998. You could understand those numbers if the race had been boring, but this was perhaps the best race of the season. I couldn’t look away.

So, it begs the question, if the on-track product is good, and no one’s watching, what’s the problem? Simple: over-exposure. By racing week-in-week out for thirty six weeks of the year, NASCAR is overloading their fan base with races. Despite what the sport’s governing body might think, more races is not the way to go. Not when there are spotty crowds and poor television racings. It’s clear that NASCAR fans are voting with their feet and their fingers, not going to the track and not watching on television.

It’ll never happen, because NASCAR is stubborn, but a cull of the schedule should happen. There are a lot of tracks that don’t warrant two races – New Hampshire, Michigan – and there is a good case for consolidating. Look at Darlington, whose two races became one because of poor attendance, and now the track puts up the ‘Full House’ sign each year when the Southern 500 weekend rolls around.

The well-attended tracks should keep their two races. That’d be Daytona, Talladega, Richmond, Charlotte, Martinsville and Bristol. Phoenix doesn’t need two dates. Nor does Kansas. We can do without witnessing twin events at Dover. Most definitely, the same applies to the three-turn triangle, Pocono.

These are tracks where races drag on, and feature little on-track passing: the very combination that makes fans turn off their televisions or not attend the racetrack. You could race on, say, 18 to 22 weekends a year. The best series’ leave their fans clamouring for events during off-weeks. NASCAR races so often, there’s no real chance to build anticipation.

Obviously, the poor economic situation has affected the largely working-class and southern fan base. It’s not feasible for people to go to as many races as they used to, not now that fuel, accommodation and food have risen. Those external costs need to be factored in. On top of that, there’s your actual ticket to the race, and the expense builds up. If you take a family, you’re outlaying a small fortune, and people tend not to want to if they know the racing isn’t going to be top-notch.

Talladega’s five hundred mile race went quickly because there was lots happening – it was intense racing. Comparatively, the four-hundred mile event at Las Vegas in February didn’t have the same amount of excitement, and therefore lagged.

Some races deserve to be run over 500 miles. Obviously, the Daytona 500, but other events like the autumn Charlotte race, both Talladega events and maybe one of the Texas races. Some 400 mile events could be slashed by a hundred. Prime candidates for that? Both Pocono events, the two visits to Michigan, Kansas and Kentucky. Whilst we’re at it, Martinsville, a 500-lap race on a .500-mile short track, could be shortened by a hundred laps.

Understanding your fan-base’s concerns should be a key priority for any sport, and something NASCAR simply doesn’t do as well others. By shortening the schedule and shortening some race distances, they are more likely to have bigger crowds filing in to tracks that only host one event, rather than diluting that crowd over two weekends.

I get that there’s a certain tradition involved, but times are changing, and there obviously isn’t the same appetite as there once was for watching such a long event. It’s better to make some changes now, to preserve the most important parts of NASCAR’s long and storied history, rather than see the sport die away.

Case in point, the IndyCar Series. Yes, there was division in the ranks that led to the demise of the sport for all but a small pocket of diehard fans, but the end result is that a once-mainstream series is now relegated to something of a niche sport. NASCAR would not want that happening, but if crowds and television ratings disappear, so will sponsors, and there goes the sport’s large public profile – that’s exactly what happened to IndyCar.

How to build for the future? Getting rid of marathon races means that you’re likely to attract more fans, especially the younger set, who just don’t want to sit anywhere and watch a race for 3 or four hours. It’s a fact of life. But a race that plays out in, say, a neat two hour window, is more likely to draw in new fans…which NASCAR need, for the older generation of stock-car racing fans is dwindling.

The most worrying fact is they aren’t attracting as many new fans as they should be. The tradition of a Sunday afternoon (or, sometimes, Saturday night) race isn’t being passed down from one generation to the next. Or, if it is, younger fans are losing interest quickly. The reality is that there just isn’t the same popularity level as there was, even a decade ago. Ratings and attendance illustrate the decline.

Either way, someone needs to think into the future. Not five or ten years, but a decade or two, and make the necessary changes now to preserve the sport, or else there’ll only be distant memories and museum pieces to remind us of NASCAR racing.