The Doom and Gloom in NASCAR

It seems every week that much of the talk around NASCAR is poor attendance and/or sinking TV ratings. This Sunday the doom and gloom news out shone the wonderful on track racing NASCAR fans were treated to. When does the sport hit their bottom? Like most NASCAR followers I’m sick and tired of hearing and reading about empty seats and poor TV ratings. Most of us can agree to that, but how does it get fixed. Here’s my take.

In fairness the sport has taken it on the chin of late. First one the sports all-time greats, Jeff Gordon steps away from his ride to join the TV booth at FOX. Than Tony Stewart, a future Hall of Famer retires from NASCAR. Next, the personable and popular Carl Edwards, inches away from a Championship decides to take a break. And now the most popular driver, maybe in the history of NASCAR, Dale Earnhardt Jr. decides to put his keys away at the end of this season. Ouch!

The trend isn’t a good one NASCAR fans. The race at Richmond International Raceway had more empty seats than occupied ones this past Sunday. The Richmond Times-Dispatch estimated the attendance on Sunday at 30,000. In the glory days of NASCAR, over 100,000 people would separate money from their wallets for the privilege to sit in one of those seats.

You want further proof of the woes of NASCAR? It was a historic low for Television ratings for a NASCAR race. This year’s race found 1 million less viewers than last season and half of the viewers of the race in 2008. Double ouch!

Of course it’s easy to point out all that ails the sport. One only needs to scan twitter to see various atats of declining attendance and television viewership. For years it seemed that NASCAR was content to point the finger at the US economy as the reason for all this bad news. NASCAR seemingly put their heads in the sand, in hopes that when the economy turned around, VIOLA, the fans would return.

NASCAR Chairman, Brian France, at his 2016 season ending “State of NASCAR” would have made Kyle Busch proud. “Everything is fine.” Well Mr., France, everything is not fine. The sport might not be on life support but it’s injured. An Ouch hat trick!

So here we are, week after week where even when the racing is tremendous, as in Martinsville, Bristol and Richmond, we spend more time talking empty seats and Nielsen ratings than on track action. I’m not sure we’ll ever recapture the level of success we saw in the past but I’m optimistic the sport will eventually see a turn around.

I think NASCAR has finally seen the light. The segment racing and its bonus and playoff points have infused additional racing moments during race days. Here are a few other things I’d like to see.

1. Stars sell. Losing Sr., Gordon, Stewart, Edwards and now Junior is a huge loss. Other sports put their stars out there to sell their sport. LeBron in basketball, Crosby in hockey are examples of sports putting their biggest stars out front. Someone out of Elliott, Larson, Blaney or some other name needs to step up to become the new face of NASCAR.

2. Shorten the dang races. Today’s fan has the attention span of small child. I’m as guilty as the next guy. Give me more than 5 minutes of nothing happening and I’m checking my cell phone for news or email. It’s the way of the world today. We get bored easily. Gone our the days of fans wanting to sit in the seats for 5 hours. Heck, even Major League Baseball is looking for ways to shorten their game. The NFL, arguably the most popular of all US sports, plays games in 3 hours or less.

3. Drivers have an interest too. Who hasn’t seen a NASCAR driver take a detour at the track to avoid contact with fans? I still think NASCAR has the best access of drivers to their fans but there are too many times where drivers act as if fans are the enemy. I chatted recently with an old time fan who told me that after many races, fans could march down to pit road and have drivers standing on pit road signing autographs.

4. Keep making the cars and therefore the racing better. We’ve heard a lot about making the cars harder to drive, putting more emphasis on the drivers instead of the car. NASCAR seems to be going in this direction.

5. I’ve been saying for years, make the on track racing better and they will come. I believe if we see better racing a lot of what ails the sport will be solved.

6. More short tracks please and while we’re at it more on track amenities. Remember we get bored now after 5 minutes of inactivity. We need other entertainment options at tracks. Many tracks now have live pre race concerts. That’s a start. Even the new stadiums in other sport venues have lots of different entertainment options. NASCAR should follow suit.

I’m sick of hearing about the problems with NASCAR. I yearn for the day when all of the talk is about the great racing and not the empty seats.

Thanks for reading. Listen to WTBQ radio on Monday and Friday mornings at 8:45 as I join Frank, Taylor and the Morning Show gang to discuss all the current happenings in NASCAR. 1110AM 93.5FM or online at WTBQ.COM. You can also follow me on twitter @JimLaplante