TV Times – NASCAR and TV Partners Have BIG Problems
For 2012, NASCAR had the smallest audience in five years. There was also a 25 percent drop in the very important 18-34 year old male demographic.
From The Sporting News comes a very serious revelation. NASCAR had an up and down year on the TV ratings over the past few years. This year it was mostly down. For 2012, NASCAR had the smallest audience in five years. There was also a 25 percent drop in the very important 18-34 year old male demographic. Those NASCAR races which aired on Fox, TNT and ESPN averaged a 3.6 Nielsen rating and 5.8 million viewers through 35 of 36 races. The season-ending races at Homestead was down 5 percent and 10 percent respectively from last year. All that gave up all of the gains the sport made last year which was its first annual ratings increase since 2005.
Three races weren’t counted because of rain delays that forced the races to be held on weekday mornings. Ratings among advertisers’ favorite demographic, 18- to 34-year-olds, fell further. NASCAR races earned a 0.9 rating in that demo, down 25 percent from last year’s 1.2.
NASCAR executives attributed the declines to uncontrollable forces, starting with the Daytona 500′s first postponement in 54 years, from Sunday afternoon to Monday evening. NASCAR executives also cited competition from the London Olympics and NCAA basketball conference championship games as reasons for the downturn.
Fox and ESPN executives insist that they are not concerned by this year’s ratings and tout the sport’s overall audience, which still is one of the biggest on TV. Mulvihill said Fox has reconfigured its sales pitches on NASCAR for next season to highlight that audience. However, we take exception to NASCAR’s and their TV partners and feel that they are both in denial.
The network is trying to dispel the notion among ad buyers that NASCAR can’t deliver an audience with buying power. It’s doing so by comparing the average income of NASCAR viewers to the average income in their home market rather than the national average. For example, in the Tampa Bay market, NASCAR viewers have an average income of $52,000, significantly more than the designated market area (DMA) average of $42,000 a year.
Here’s our version of the situation: Fox and NASCAR think that they can keep going with the same old format. With all due respect, we see a trend that’s not good. We feel that all of this should result in NASCAR, Brian France in particular along with his TV partners, should consider giving Sprint Cup races a major makeover, like shortening most all of the races and changing the format. Also they could consider stopping the race at the half-way point and then reversing the order of the positions.
That big change would require all of the top running drivers and cars to come from the back again and racing back to the front. It’s a radical idea but consider what happened to the TV audience in 2012 that took a major drop. The biggest complaint we hear from NASCAR fans is that the races lack competition except for the last 20 laps because every driver is stroking in order to be around at the end of the race. And that’s when many fans tune in to see what’s happening.
That big drop off in this year’s TV audience should sound an alarm to the suits in the NASCAR front office and their TV partners. What happens if the ratings go even lower in 2013? Not to mention the empty seats at all of the NASCAR Cup races this year. NASCAR and their TV partners have major problems. From the Sporting News story, it’s very obvious that they (the principals) don’t recognize it.
The Formula 1 series came to a merciful end in Brazil. When it was all over, Jenson Button won the rain-soaked affair, followed by Sebastian Vettel and Filipe Massa. Vettel ended up winning the F1 Championship just +3 points ahead of Fernando Alonso. The race finished under caution due to heavy downpours. Vettel took his third championship in spite of radio and tire problems compounded by the very wet weather. “It was a tough race. It was good that we did our homework,” he said in the post race interview.
SPEED’s coverage of the inaugural Formula One race from Austin drew more than 500,000 viewers, scoring a Nielsen Household Rating of .42. The ratings mark is up 40% with HHs (0.42 vs. 0.30), 70% among M35-54 (0.46 vs. 0.27) and 75% among M18-49 (0.28 vs. 0.16) versus last year’s equivalent race (Brazil). It was the highest rated Formula One race on SPEED with HHs and M18-49 in well over a year.
German automotive group Daimler has secured full control of Mercedes-Benz’s Formula One operation after Aabar Investments on Monday announced it had agreed to sell its stake in the team. This came from SportsBusinessInternational.
This also came from the same source: Coca-Cola will “break the conventions of traditional Formula One sponsorship” after unveiling a new partnership with the Lotus team that will provide exposure for the Burn energy drink brand, according to the beverage company’s marketing chief Emmanuel Seuge.
The world’s largest drinks company has been linked with an F1 sponsorship over recent weeks and confirmed the deal ahead of the 2012 season-ending Brazilian Grand Prix in Sao Paulo. Further details will be revealed in 2013 when the partnership officially launches, but Coca-Cola is promising to offer an alternative approach to Formula One sponsorship. The deal will position Burn against rival energy drinks brand Red Bull, which has been the title sponsor of F1’s leading team since 2010. (END)
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Robert, Your not the only one that feels that way. It’s the general consensus and it’s a mystery that it hasn’t taken place up until now. Just about everyone agrees about shortening the races. Which might help and rusults in a lot more racing early on rather than stroking it in order to be around by the end of the race. Which is when the real racing begins.
Maybe it’s that fact that people are finally getting sick and tired of wasting 4.5-5hours a sunday watching this garbage. Try shortening the majority of the races to 300-350 miles and give everyone a break.
Thanks to all that commented on this story. I just want to make you aware of the fact that during the middle of the 2012 Sprint Cup season Bruton Smith, who owns almost half of the tracks that host Cup races, proposed that the Sprint Cup races should be stopped half-way and then restarted in order to add some competition to the dull races. I went one better and wrote that the field should be inverted.
Some of you that said that you thought that I was crazy about inverting the field. First all of the Cup races should be shortened. I also think that by breaking up the event into three segments like The Milk Bowl race at Thunder Road Intl. Speedway is really the way to go.
That is where you time trial for the starting grid. Stop the race after it’s one third over. Inverting the starting field and finish the second third. Then invert it again. The driver with the lowest point score wins.
This idea is the brain child of Tom Curley of the American CanadianT Tour and his partner Ken Squier. Most of you know Ken Squier. He’s the guy that got the Cup races on nationwide TV (CBS) live back in 1979. He left the anouncers booth when CBS bowed out of broadcasting the Cup races some years back.
While the change seems to radical, it does make every lap count. When you criticise something that’s not working any more, you should always suggest a change. I could be wrong but I don’t think that I am. Again, thanks for all of your comments even if you don’t agree.
RFan, On losing the fans that are not die hards, unfortunately NASCAR needs everyone they can buy tickets and watching it on TV. The TV money is the biggest incremental in the overall profitablity of NASCAR and it’s tracks that host Cup races. Without it the teams would dry up and the starting fields would look enemic compared with the way they look now. On your idea about changing the cars and tires to get better competition is worth looking at. Thanks for your comments.
Dennis, Nothing is perfect. Let’s hope that NASCAR and the race teams pick up on your complaints. You bring up some interesting points and have enlightened me as well. Thanks for your comments.
Richard, Your right about the focus on the booth “favorites”. I’m glad a Curt Busch fan responded because he needs all the help that he can get. Even though he’s NASCAR’s bad boy he’s still good for the series. Because love him or hate him both groups will watch him on TV or buy tickets and go to the track. Let’s hope the talking heads in the anchor booth and the pits pick up this and cover Curt when he’s behaving himself not just when he acts up. Thanks for your comments.
Get the cars off the bump stops and make them run on soft springs again. There was good racing in the past on the mile and a half and two mile tracks, though it has been quite a while. It can happen again if the cars and tires are changed. Dale Earnhardt begged Atlanta to not change their track because he felt it was so good (but to no avail). But it still could produce good races if changes are made to the cars.
Cut out the gimmicks to create close finishes. NASCAR needs to lose the fans that only watch a close finish. They are just pumping money into the driver’s jet planes and harming the sport. Less fans but more diehards will be much better in the long run. Unfortunately, some of the fans NASCAR is losing currently are the diehards.
The reason F1 takes the month of August off is a mandantory shutdown of the factories that work nonstop on not only the cars but coming up with the ideas that make them faster every race. Remember F1 has a “Resource Allocation” rule. i.e. a spending cap.
Nascar could learn a lesson from the F1 rule which requires the tire mfg. to bring two compounds to the track for every race. The team is then required to run both att some point. It sure adds strategy and planning to the mix. Nascar and Goodyear have come up with lame excuses why they couldnt/wouldnt do it in the past. But one thing is certain. If they keep doing what they are doing they will keep getting what theyre getting.
Bad camera direction is what’s killing it the most for me. 99% of the time you’d have no idea which track they are at because you have a series of one and two car close ups.
Letting people build a bunch of mile and a half, cookie cutter, aeropush tracks wasn’t NASCAR’s brightest idea. The only excitement is on restarts before they get strung out and can’t pass.
Getting away from stock car sheet metal so the cars don’t resemble what’s in the showroom was another doozy. I understand how NASCAR wanted to get rid of the advantages some manufacturers would have on some tracks but, hey, it’s stock car racing. That’s how it always was until NASCAR thought that the fans were stupid and would happily cheer for decals.
Jeff Gordon style interviews became a problem as well. The drivers lost their personality to please sponsors.
Finally, it used to be easy to glance at the TV and see who was racing who. Now, with few cars having a single sponsor for the whole season, you have cars changing paint schemes many times a year. It gets to be a struggle.
The TV networks want to continually shove down nascar fans throat what they want to see. To beat to death Danica Patrick or show just the major teams and not have more run through the fields is a slow death to nascar. There are more than five or six teams in the field and yet for a fan to even get to see there driver that is not as popular is a maricle.I am a Kurt Busch fan and though he may have done things to hurt himself the media wouldn’t even show him while running in the top five. There are still fans of every driver out there and yet you have media that will not cover the race. Wake up nascar.
I was with you until the “stop the race midway and reverse the order”. Dumbest thing I’ve heard, EVER. That would remove any pretense that allows NASCAR to still call itself a “sport” (name one other sport that does something that assinine once the contest starts). Gee, don’t you think guys would be sandbagging for the first half of the race. THAT would be a hoot to watch.
Worst idea EVER.
IMO part of the problem is that NASCAR keeps looking for some magic bullet to manufacture fans by manufacturing the races. Unlike fans of other major sport NASCAR doesn’t have a built-in home team fanbase in every major city. Nope, NASCAR has to earn their fans. Furthermore their fans will be seeking something different than NFL, MLB, NBA or NHL fans in their sport. NASCAR might never be a hit with the 18 – 25 crowd no matter what they do (have they ever been? seriously, I’m asking).
NASCAR’s best move is to ditch the New Coke, go back to Coke Classic and do what they were doing before the ratings drop. They had to be doing something right during the late 80′s and 90′s to build the sport up.
PQ Ribelin, Getting rid of the aerodynamics wouldn’t work. Coming up from the back would be more exciting.
PQ Ribelin, Getting rid of the aerodynamics wouldn’t change a thing. Coming up from the back would always work. It works on short tracks and would also work on the super-speedways.
A bunch of fools. Racing means racing, side-by-side, passing, bumping, real nail biting racing.
Only an idiot would come up with gimmicks such as reversing the racing order to entertain true race fans.
Get rid of the aerodynamic issues and put race cars on the track.
Curtis Webster in regard to reversing the order and drivers sandbagging in the first segment. Your right. Let’s go a bit further and do it this way. Break the race up into three segements. Time trial for the grid. Reverse the first segment finish in the second segment. Reverse the second segment finish in the third segment. Award points for each segment to each driver with the lowest score winning the overall race. In the event of a tie count the number of passes that the two lowest drivers made during the race. With this formula no driver can stroke it during the race. You race or you lose.
This is the same formula used at the Thunder Road Speedway in Barre, VT for the annual Milk Bowl. It’s been said that the fans that watch The Milk Bowl have to pay constant attention to the race. There’s very little opportunity for losing your attention span. It does not have to be exactly this way. But, for the sake of eliminating the boring NASCAR races, do something like I’ve outlined. It’s obvious to all of us, except NASCAR and their TV partners, that something has to change. Because the old way isn’t working any more.
Kevin Longwell in regards to merciful end, the F1 season ran one week beyond the NASCAR season because F1 took off the entire month of August. I think that F1 should have run during August because that’s when the weather is the best for racing in the northern hemisphere. Europe shuts down for the entire month of August but I think that it’s still a good time to sell tickets to a race. On the weather it’s never very entertaining to race in the rain. The only ones keeping dry are the ones watching it on TV. But, I realize that the weather is part of the endurance factor.
” Also they could consider stopping the race at the half-way point and then reversing the order of the positions.”
With all due respect, that is the dumbest idea I have heard yet!! If that were the case, all the drivers will try to hang out at the back of the pack so as to be moved to the front at the halfway mark. Again, half a race with no racing!!
Now shortening all the races, I can see.
You must not have watched F1 this year. You called it a merciful end, but it was one of the most exciting years ever. The race didn’t end under caution due to weather, but rather due to a crashed car in a position where it couldn’t be removed quickly. There were no “heavy downpours” during the race, just light rain that came and went throughout with slightly more rain at the very end. Nobody ran on full wet tires, but rather were alternating between slicks and inters.
Russ Edwards, I like your metaphor! The PR people that put of these releases can put a postive spin on the end of the world. They think that we are stupid. It’s time for Brian France to pull his head of the sand and admit that he’s got a problem that needs to be solved. What suprises me is that Fox Sports has already signed the contract for billions of TV rights revenue! And ESPN and TNT are sure to follow. Possibly even with NBC Sports, too.
Curious that Nascar and the networks blame the economy for their woes re attendance and viewers, while at the same time touting the fact that the average Nascar fan makes an above average income. Obvious spin.
The sport has become irrelevant to modern times. While I dont know how to do it, the things they are doing are merely rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.