The question I’m asked the most is how NASCAR has changed since I started reporting on it in 1979.
Although I left the beat as a full-time reporter 11 years ago, I’ve witnessed enough evolution to form a legitimate opinion. You can count the number of reporters who’ve covered more Cup Series races than me on two or three fingers.
My answer is simple. NASCAR changed for the worse, I believe, when it stopped being a sport and became a business.
A sport that was once driven by horsepower and driver personalities is now based on market shares, brand awareness and stakeholder interests.
NASCAR founder Bill France and his son, Bill France Jr., were promoters. They believed if the product on the track was good, everything would take care of itself.
The third generation downsized the competition departments and expanded the marketing and licensing departments. To accommodate the changes, they made the cars identical. The only real difference between today’s Toyota, Ford and Chevrolet is the front and rear bumper cones.
And the worst side of business is greed. Top-tier teams that used to demand as much as $35 million a decade ago are now thankful to make $20 million. And based on the dwindling television ratings, it’s only going to get worse.
Ratings are in the dump. Several factors have pushed NASCAR, notably the Cup Series, further down the dial. College and pro football. More channel options. And a confusing and uninteresting playoff format.
NASCAR currently admits any winner from the first 30 races and the highest-ranked drivers in the point standings to create a field of 16 for a 10-race playoff. Every three races, the lowest-ranked drivers are eliminated until there are four remaining for one race, a winner-take-all run for the championship.
Winning the stock-car championship isn’t necessarily about being good from Valentine’s Day to Thanksgiving. It’s about being good enough to survive three rounds of eliminations and beating three drivers on one afternoon.
Compounding NASCAR’s problems are the facts that most of their races have been pushed away from major networks like FOX and NBC to FS1, USA and TNT. Even worse, fans could only watch five races on Amazon Prime.
Nobody likes to channel-hop or be forced to subscribe to a service. There are too many other options.
Denny Hamlin said the current television contract seems to be focused more on helping networks build new content.
“In each one of the TV deals that we’ve signed over the last few years or the past few agreements that we’ve had, we’ve always just taken the most amount of money,” he said on his “Actions Detrimental” podcast. “It’s not been about ‘What’s going to put us on in the most households.’ We were the guinea pigs to get Channel X off the ground, Channel Y off the ground. And you’re asking so much of your fans to just keep chasing you around all these different networks.”
The Xfinity Series found a permanent home on CW, and it’s thrived with consistent ratings. There’s a lesson to be learned there.
Another possible solution is to change the playoffs. If it were me, I’d take the top eight drivers after 32 races and compete on four different styles of tracks – a short track, superspeedway, a high-banked intermediate and a flat intermediate – and the driver who accumulates the most points in the four races is your champion.
That would be good for business.
