2017 NASCAR Season - Television Ratings Thread

Skoalbandit33 said:
It would be interesting to know what type of contingencies are built into the broadcast deals. I am sure the networks didn't just agree to pay Nascar billions of dollars without some sort of performance clauses but they were dumb enough to overpay to begin with so who knows?

The TV deal assures Nascar and the tracks will get paid but what about the teams? The charters aren't worth the paper they are printed on and several teams are having sponsorship issues and I find it all an interesting dynamic.
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The tracks pay the teams.

You're sure there are Performance clauses ... or not. There's an easy way to monitor that. Watch the quarterly filings of the publicly owned track operators. If their TV revenue streams shrink, you'll know.
 
Ford Racing said:
I honestly thought this would be the year we would start to see ratings stabilize or even see a slight uptick. Daytona was encouraging, but everything else has been down aside from a few races. It does seem like the declines are slowing at most tracks. Maybe next year we will see things stabilize? (I've been saying that for close to 10 years now)
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If memory serves between 60% and 70% of the people that watched the last race were over 50 and less than 10% were between 18-34. Until that riddle is solved the ratings have to go down as it is just math. If young people don't get behind the series it will end up like open wheel.
 
darlingtonfan said:
Maybe we all have such fond memories from the 80's and 90's it was very affordable back then for a family to attend.I remember the free cigarettes my dad would get.
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I loved the old Bristol International Raceway as it was gnarly but it just felt right and you could have a great time for not much money plus all the freebies!
 
aunty dive said:
The tracks pay the teams.

You're sure there are Performance clauses ... or not. There's an easy way to monitor that. Watch the quarterly filings of the publicly owned track operators. If their TV revenue streams shrink, you'll know.
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Most companies are not going to enter into an agreement with another company without some stipulations but the money the networks threw at Nascar was stupid money so who knows if there are contingencies? I am sure if there is a story to be told someone will tell it.
 
Skoalbandit33 said:
Most companies are not going to enter into an agreement with another company without some stipulations but the money the networks threw at Nascar was stupid money so who knows if there are contingencies? I am sure if there is a story to be told someone will tell it.
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I can certainly agree that the money paid to Nascar was ''stupid'' money..... I thought Ray Charles could have seen that..... We'll just have to see next time how they value the broadcast rites... The sponsorship rites sure were discounted this time around.... Monster got it for less than a year of major sponsor on 1 car......
 
Skoalbandit33 said:
Most companies are not going to enter into an agreement with another company without some stipulations but the money the networks threw at Nascar was stupid money so who knows if there are contingencies? I am sure if there is a story to be told someone will tell it.
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The publicly available financial statements of the primary track owners have been telling the tale for years.

That will continue.
 
Skoalbandit33 said:
I loved the old Bristol International Raceway as it was gnarly but it just felt right and you could have a great time for not much money plus all the freebies!
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BIR was great fun back when you could go race day and pay $25 for festival seating in the front three rows. That left lotsa money for the other important things like beer. But, you had to get there early to get seats near the middle of the front stretch. Though that just left more time to drink beer and dodge chicken bones.

Oh, almost forgot about the roly-poly, unorganized parking "lots" (if you could call them that). It made for real interesting times finding your car after the race. And then the trek out of there was a slog, but well worth it in the long run.

Kids today don't know what fun is...
 
Ford Racing said:
Compared to other sports, Nascar's tv contact isn't really outrageous.
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Sports leagues are not shedding customers at near the rate Nascar is either. It is highly likely that 6 of the last 11 races will have less than 2.5 million fans watching from home this year and some of those will end up dangerously close to 2 million. In 2014 the least viewed of the the last 11 races had 3.6 million viewers on ESPN so it isn't a matter of losing 75K one race and picking up 50K in the next to balance things out.
 
bill94el said:
BIR was great fun back when you could go race day and pay $25 for festival seating in the front three rows. That left lotsa money for the other important things like beer. But, you had to get there early to get seats near the middle of the front stretch. Though that just left more time to drink beer and dodge chicken bones.

Oh, almost forgot about the roly-poly, unorganized parking "lots" (if you could call them that). It made for real interesting times finding your car after the race. And then the trek out of there was a slog, but well worth it in the long run.

Kids today don't know what fun is...
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It was a blast and I wish I had a buck for each chicken bone I stepped on leaving the track. Some of the drunks put on a heck of an entertaining show before the race and that was free.
 
Skoalbandit33 said:
It was a blast and I wish I had a buck for each chicken bone I stepped on leaving the track. Some of the drunks put on a heck of an entertaining show before the race and that was free.
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You're quite welcome for the prerace entertainment. :biggrin:

Though I've been dry for 28 yrs now.
 
Skoalbandit33 said:
Sports leagues are not shedding customers at near the rate Nascar is either. It is highly likely that 6 of the last 11 races will have less than 2.5 million fans watching from home this year and some of those will end up dangerously close to 2 million. In 2014 the least viewed of the the last 11 races had 3.6 million viewers on ESPN so it isn't a matter of losing 75K one race and picking up 50K in the next to balance things out.
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Sure, but I think when you consider all of the content Nascar provides, it is a fair deal. Trucks, Xfinity, practice, qualifying and the K&N series take up a lot of timeslots that other sports don't use. If someone came up with a dollars spent per minute broadcast ratio, Nascar's tv deal would look very reasonable.
 
Ford Racing said:
Compared to other sports, Nascar's tv contact isn't really outrageous.
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For what they get in terms of viewership, it might be.

Ford Racing said:
To expand on this:
NBA: 9 years, 24 billion
MLB: 8 years, 12.4 billion
NFL: 8 years 39.6 billion
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The NFL had 33 of the 50 most-watched sporting events in America last year.

MLB had 9 of the top 50 non-NFL events. The NBA had 13. NASCAR had 1.

I'm not in a position to do a bang-for-your buck analysis, but the context matters.
 
FLRacingFan said:
For what they get in terms of viewership, it might be.


The NFL had 33 of the 50 most-watched sporting events in America last year.

MLB had 9 of the top 50 non-NFL events. The NBA had 13. NASCAR had 1.

I'm not in a position to do a bang-for-your buck analysis, but the context matters.
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Right, and those higher ratings are why the other leagues have deals worth much more. Plus, MLB and NBA have local tv contracts that add even more to the pot. Maybe when I get a chance I'll see what's on in a given week and compare MLB and NASCAR.
 
FLRacingFan said:
That was FOX's initial extension. After FOX added a couple more years and NBC took the back half it totaled $8.2b/10 years.
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I can understand why a person would think Nascar's broadcast rights were a good deal if they believed that the networks were paying less than 2.5 billion over 10 years. However 8.2 billion is an entirely different kettle of fish.
 
The race had a 2.8 or 4.7 million viewers on TNT in 2014 and it sounds like about 3.8 million viewers in 2015 and 2016 and this year around 3.2 million or about a 16% drop in viewership compared to the last 2 years and about 35% since 2014.
 
amazing that they are moving the Eldora truck race to Fox business because of kickball when kickball has those numbers.
 
StandOnIt said:
amazing that they are moving the Eldora truck race to Fox business because of kickball when kickball has those numbers.
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I will make a wild guess and say that Soccer has less viewers than Trucks but has a better demographic. Just a guess though.
 
dang, golf be kicking butt...

Saturday night baseball not doing that bad. Gotta consider that there were three games showcased depending on the area you live in... so even if it's mainly fans of the cities who's team played that's still not far off from the average weekend cup race. Seems like a cup race should be ahead of a baseball rating by a good margin since it's supposed to draw fans from all over the country... not just a couple cities at a time.
 
Did my part.

Left the television thing in the man cave on the motorsports entertainment broadcast when I went to dinner. The television at dinner was tuned to golf.
 
Acs said:
So NASCAR has officially slipped behind f*&king golf in ratings now. Jeez just put to bed any pretentions right now of being a major sport.
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yeah the oldest demographical group is beating out the next oldest demographical group. :confused: Maybe Racing will get full time over the air network coverage now.
 
I think one of the myriad of reasons is the blackmail many viewers have to pay to watch races, many providers are on the upper most expensive tier. It is well noted how Cable TV has been having cratering viewership at almost the same rate. Very hard to follow the series without pay TV.
 
StandOnIt said:
I think one of the myriad of reasons is the blackmail many viewers have to pay to watch races, many providers are on the upper most expensive tier. It is well noted how Cable TV has been having cratering viewership at almost the same rate. Very hard to follow the series without pay TV.
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I also wonder about the streaming side of things. At least half the races that I watched are streamed over my Amazon Firestick or Roku. I'm not the only one that does this.
 
My guess is NASCAR and golf are shared many of the same viewers.....switching back and forth when commercials come on, since both events were on at roughly the same times. Golf having 200,000 more viewers may have been from the benefit of being on a mainstream broadcast network.
 
The golf tournament came down to sudden death – no gimmicks.

The motorsports entertainment thing had already suffered two artificial stoppages when I walked away from it.
 
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