Yes, viewer engagement is important - which has been part of my arguments. For NASCAR, the older demographic has already been engaged (although discouraged by NASCAR's marketing practices these past few decades)... I wouldn't assume that a younger audience (who might be more open to new broadcast technology but is generally less interested in cars) will be as engaged... "if you build it they will come" was better for a Hollywood movie than it is for real life.
If we want to go the route of old fans vs. new fans, I can make the argument that those "engaged" older fans are doing more to discourage younger fans from enjoying the sport.
"NASCAR died when Dale died." The constant negativity about how NASCAR has sucked since the 1980s. And most recently, the blatant racism displayed toward the sport's lone African-American driver.
There is an old marketing saying, "It costs five times more to acquire a new customer than it does to keep a current customer. Bringing that new customer to the spending level of your current customers costs 16 times more." Sounds like discounting the importance of current but older customers is pretty risky.
Again, here's the thing. The type of package myself and
@The Nature Boy wanted to see would've been significantly more cost-effective for fans of ALL ages. Keeping existing customers is costing current and new customers significantly more money - all because some of y'all can't figure out how to work a remote with six buttons.
I have tried to negotiate the cable / ISP service prices that you quote. To get those I have to downgrade my service speed (which my wife will not tolerate since she works from home as a computer programmer) and go to a lower tier TV service (which as you said can drop other channels that will carry NASCAR races). The cable service company insists upon selling me a package (whether I use it all or not) and they manipulate their prices so I don't have significant savings for very long. I still have to purchase additional hardware and streaming service subscriptions. I will still have my lousy wireless problems. Overall it looks like a cost wash at best, and a lot of trouble for a product (NASCAR races) that I'm becoming marginally engaged with. So I'm not going to bother.
I've acknowledged the problems with streaming media many times, and, this falls under that category. I'm having a similar problem with my ISP - my rates nearly doubled back in July and, at the exact same time the rate hike went into effect, my internet speeds have been throttled to exactly 1/10th of what I pay for.
What ISPs are allowed to get away with, (deregulation is usually bad for consumers and employees, and the end of net neutrality legalized many shenanigans that shouldn't be legal), should piss everyone off and honestly, should be a much larger discussion. Much of the fiber that's been laid down to provide internet access has been through "public-private partnerships," meaning the taxpayers paid for the installation of high-speed internet, and then access/control of it got handed over to some multinational corporation. I'm paying $90/month for a service that should cost $25/month tops.
Although I am replying to your posts, please do not mistake that I am singling you out or disrespecting you. Just trying to convey how some of us old folks think. We've been down the road, and are familiar with folks who prod us into "upgrading" to their ways, only to find it was no real upgrade after all. Sponsors look at total number of eyeballs, and although they usually will do long term accounting and research of customer trends, they can get those total viewer numbers more quickly and with less effort (and cost) so yes "total viewers" is important to them. They are not going to limit their comparisons to whatever traffic numbers certain channels generate - they are going to look more at totals and calculate their cost per viewer. Then they decide if their return on investment is worthwhile, and compare it to several other non-NASCAR venues they could advertise with instead. I will not be surprised to see more racing teams and tracks struggling even more to obtain continued sponsorship.
I'm one of those people who is skeptical of technological advances. Especially since I used to work in IT.
Cable television is dying. It's past time for it to die. These OTT services literally eliminate the middleman and make access to programming much more affordable.
Sponsors are definitely NOT looking at "total viewers." That's why more sponsors are leaving and not being replaced. Part of the reason NASCAR made this deal was because they were under pressure to bring home the bacon. This deal was all about the money.
Hope I am wrong. Time will tell. But NASCAR has had a knack for chasing away viewers for quite a while now, and it appears they haven't kicked that habit.
That's what NASCAR has done here. They've made the sport more expensive to watch, with a significant reduction of races available on OTA television, and they've put half of their races on cable networks that may only reach 35 million homes by 2030.
If they made the deal that some of us younger fans wanted to see, it would only cost $35/month (if you kept all three streaming services all year) to watch the races. Instead of $217 (which is the average cable/satellite TV bill in the United States).
