2017 NASCAR Season - Television Ratings Thread

dpkimmel2001 said:
Seriously though, what is the excuse this time?
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The people aren’t sophisticated enough to appreciate good motorsports entertainment……

Add more scheduled cautions, add in a random number of unscheduled cautions, make more wrecks ‘n cut down on the time permitted to repair damage.
 
It looks like about 1.2 million less people tuned in this year versus last year. Ouch!

It is a good thing we have playoffs, monster girls, stages and a gen 6 car or all the tracks would look like Wilkesboro......:D
 
NJJammer said:
That's terrible news. I know it's not good to extrapolate trends too far over time, but the trend is disturbing. How many more years can the sport survive once the sponsors figure out they overpaid for "eyeballs" and start to pull out of the sport completely?
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If things were off for just a year and then bounced back it would be one thing but this slide in overall interest, attendance and viewership has gone on for around 10 years. For the first time in forever there were races with less than 3 million viewers last year and I suspected that 2018 may be the first time we see races with less than 2 million but I may need to revise my thinking.

It isn't time to summon the ghost of Dr Kevorkian yet but it would be a good idea to know where he is hanging out.
 
dpkimmel2001 said:
I heard that they are still playing baseball in Phoenix.

Seriously though, what is the excuse this time?
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I'm wondering myself because apparently all of a sudden these other sporting events just started popping up out of nowhere and started interfering with NASCAR's ratings. As if the NCAA Tournament is some new sporting event that's still in its infancy. Really, there were never college basketball games to compete against in March before? No one went to spring training before the Cubs were good? Maybe in a couple of weeks we can blame it on this new up-and-coming golf tournament, the Masters.

NASCAR is never going to exist in a vacuum and we're never going to have a season that only spans June-August when there's nothing but golf and baseball on. I don't know how these people manage to excuse this stuff with a straight face.
 
WOW! The masterminds on reddit have enlightened me. It was all because yesterday's Elite Eight teams were from traditionally strong NASCAR markets and interfering with our ratings.

Good thing UNC and Kentucky totally aren't basketball bluebloods and Florida definitely hadn't gone to the Elite Eight half a dozen times since 2006. Once these schools go back to being terrible at basketball they won't be able to rooin our ratings anymore. Everything's great!
 
A millennial friend of my dropped by where I was watching the race yesterday and watched about 30 laps. The quote was "People pay money to watch this? I don't get how they stay in business."

There may be more prophetic truth in that statement than I may be willing to admit.
 
Matthew2470 said:
People missed a good race. Sucks for them.
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I think Vegas was down over a million viewers this year over last and it looks to be the same for Cali. Evidently there are a lot of people that don't think they are missing anything.
 
BobbyFord said:
I've been looking forward to the Auto Club Speedway weekend feedback survey. Just got the email. I hit them with both barrels.
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What did Auto Club Speedway do wrong (you know, aside from being owned by ISC, which is a different discussion)? Not their fault NASCAR decided to do stages.
 
NJJammer said:
A millennial friend of my dropped by where I was watching the race yesterday and watched about 30 laps. The quote was "People pay money to watch this? I don't get how they stay in business."

There may be more prophetic truth in that statement than I may be willing to admit.
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That is dagger in the heart stuff right there. I thought that Monster may get some millennials to look in on the series but was skeptical that they would stay as I feel adding buxom lasses and stages wasn't enough to make Nascar must see stuff.
 
Ford Racing said:
They didn't lose over a million viewers because of the stages.
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NASCAR losing viewers for this race has nothing to do with Auto Club Speedway is my point though.

It's not like they did something to the track to change the racing (which for a lot of people, this low low downforce package was supposed to be an improvement), or repave the track which they haven't so far.
 
NJJammer said:
A millennial friend of my dropped by where I was watching the race yesterday and watched about 30 laps. The quote was "People pay money to watch this? I don't get how they stay in business."

There may be more prophetic truth in that statement than I may be willing to admit.
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I had it on in the living room and the first thing one of my friends noticed was the attendance. Not a good look.
 
A season can't be determined on 5 or 6 races but after an uptick in viewership and a full house at Daytona Nascar has been slapped around like one of the stooges. Hopefully advertisers and potential sponsors are not paying attention.
 
MikeInIllinois said:
Problem is now is when they usually make their hay on the numbers. Hard saying what it'll be when they get past the Coca-Cola 600 and start hitting the summer doldrums.
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We could see our first sub 2 million viewer race during the dog days. I still won't believe it until I see it.
 
Pretty prescient by Monster if they did only sign a two-year deal with options. They're giving it their best shot without too much of a commitment. It's a shame the bubble bursting hasn't stabilized despite what everyone in charge comes up with. I suppose NASCAR is following the trends of sports like horse racing and boxing: once prestigious, incredibly well-attended events the were featured in the public collective consciousness to becoming a niche sport with a much smaller, dedicated audience.

Less races, less cars in the field and smaller 35-50K crowds at the tracks with less national sponsors and less money to go around for all concerned seems to be the destination NASCAR is headed.
 
AndyMarquisLive said:
Streaming media is the future so, even if NASCAR loses television coverage, which I don't see happening, they'll still have an audience.

The numbers I looked up recently were pretty dire though. Many of the primetime shows on The CW, which is about as niche as you can get, are getting higher ratings in the 18-49 demographic than many NASCAR races.
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Anyone spent any time around a 18-26 year old lately. I work with nothing but that age range. They DONT watch tv. Its all streaming and most of them don't watch any live sports. its the shift in society to blame.
 
DixieThunder24 said:
Anyone spent any time around a 18-26 year old lately. I work with nothing but that age range. They DONT watch tv. Its all streaming and most of them don't watch any live sports. its the shift in society to blame.
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They watch nothing but stupid YouTube videos and Netflix.
 
NJJammer said:
They watch nothing but stupid YouTube videos and Netflix.
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you cant forget hulu

most of them that actually live on their own do not have cable or satellite they just pay for internet or data. Im not kidding this is how the 18-26 year olds that I work with here the military are.
 
DixieThunder24 said:
Anyone spent any time around a 18-26 year old lately. I work with nothing but that age range. They DONT watch tv. Its all streaming and most of them don't watch any live sports. its the shift in society to blame.
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The kids I know in that age group don't own a standard TV set but stream stuff through monitors but I do know kids in that age group that watch college and pro football live.
 
NJJammer said:
They watch nothing but stupid YouTube videos and Netflix.
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I watch all my entertainment programming on Netflix and to the best of my knowledge none of what I watch originates from the 4 main networks. I watch 4-5 foreign programs with subtitles and a lot of British stuff. I may be missing out on some good home grown stuff but each year I try and watch American programming but I don't find the comedies funny and the dramas are too formulaic and dull for me. JMO only.
 
That's why I find it rather odd NASCAR is chasing the 18-34 year old demographic. Not quite the demographic that's able to spend money on high-end items. It's the equivalent to what a top 40 radio station is trying to reach. When I think NASCAR, I don't think top 40 music.
 
MikeInIllinois said:
That's why I find it rather odd NASCAR is chasing the 18-34 year old demographic. Not quite the demographic that's able to spend money on high-end items. It's the equivalent to what a top 40 radio station is trying to reach. When I think NASCAR, I don't think top 40 music.
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They're after the growing broadband segment of their rights deals with Fox and NBC.

8 years from now, that's where most of the money will be.
 
MikeInIllinois said:
That's why I find it rather odd NASCAR is chasing the 18-34 year old demographic. Not quite the demographic that's able to spend money on high-end items. It's the equivalent to what a top 40 radio station is trying to reach. When I think NASCAR, I don't think top 40 music.
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Think of it like this.

Advertising works on young people.
It works poorly on old people.

Therefore, ad companies like to target young people.

At any rate, worrying about TV ratings is like worrying about a Billionaire losing a few million in the stock market. They are still rich and you are not.
 
Overnight Ratings: NASCAR On Fox Sees Year-Over-Year Dip For Fontana Cup Event
By Josh Carpenter, Assistant Editor

Published March 27, 2017


Fox yesterday drew a 2.9 overnight rating for Kyle Larson's win in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race at Auto Club Speedway, down 17% from a 3.5 for last year's event, which aired one week earlier in the season
 
NASCAR Fontana Ratings Lowest Since At Least 1998

http://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2017/03/nascar-ratings-down-fox-fontana-lowest-years/

There's some interesting context in there regarding NASCAR versus the NCAA Tournament.

lowestnascarfox2.png
 
Have no fear....someone will be along shortly to tell us there is 7-8 more years of TV largess left and all the commercials in all the broadcasts are sold. All is well and in 8 more years there will be a huge bidding war for all Nascar properties.
 
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