Has NASCAR lost its stranglehold on American motorsport?

If you hadn’t been under a rock this weekend, you couldn’t have missed the roar of Formula 1 racing at the Circuit of the Americas. The four-day event attracted 400,000 visitors, including 150,000 on race day.

For many in the motorsport world, it was an eye-opening experience. Participation in NASCAR races has declined so much over the years that the racetracks are tearing down grandstands to call the sport the “right size”. NASCAR still won the rating game, but Formula 1 fared better than in previous years as many thought the event’s momentum could help fill that void even closer in the years to come.

NASCAR has been the No. 1 motorsport in America for years and there was really no challenge for it. Was last weekend a sign that NASCAR is no longer as strong as it used to be among American motorsport fans? Michael Finley and Ava Ladner see it differently and discuss the topic in this week’s 2-Headed Monster.

Cracks at NASCAR compared to other series

For years, NASCAR essentially had a monopoly on the racing scene in America.

Outside of the Indianapolis 500, most of the motor sports broadcast in the States were either NASCAR owned or stuck on very small / niche cable channels like Versus and SPEED. And since 1950, when NASCAR was ahead of all other stock car series with the first Southern 500, there has not been a major stock car series that was completely independent of NASCAR for 70 years. The largest organizations in this category besides NASCAR at the time, IROC and ARCA, were at most subordinate to the French family.

Then came the Superstar Racing Experience last summer.

SRX knew it wasn’t looking to go to war with NASCAR. But the series’ mission purpose is centered around great personalities and exciting short-track races, variables long considered missing by dilapidated NASCAR fans.

In any case, the first season was a success and did very well in terms of rating.

Unlike other new sports facilities in recent years, attendance hasn’t dropped dramatically, and some of the races hosted by the group – especially the events at the Nashville Fairgrounds and Slinger Super Speedway – felt like big deals.

And then there is the rise of Formula 1.

When talking about TV ratings, be sure to include the 18-49 demo. The age between 18 and 49 is more important than the total number of viewers, because advertisers pay attention to this when choosing the programs on which they attach their weight. For this reason, the daily charts provided by ShowBuzz Daily by Nielsen contain all cable broadcasts in positions 18-49.

F1 ratings have been rising all year round, and they have been way more impressive than the constant ratings NASCAR had, as the vast majority of F1 races start between 8-10 a.m. ET, which also kills the West Coast live numbers .

The first really big hit between F1 and NASCAR was the third week of May, when F1 nearly beat NASCAR 0.33-0.31 in the demo. NASCAR had a lot of handicaps that day, with F1 being in Monaco and NASCAR having a wet race in COTA. But it was close.

The second was last month when F1 at Monza beat the Richmond Cup race in the demo that weekend. And the third came last weekend, where F1 beat NASCAR in 18-49 head-to-head, even though NASCAR ran two hours later than F1 and thus had much more crossover potential between the two spectators. NASCAR’s head-to-head rating with F1 from call to rain delay had two-thirds of the demo audience it would later in the day.

More than anything, last weekend at COTA really felt like a big event. Like Miami next year. Something NASCAR has in Daytona, Charlotte, and really nowhere else. Like Nashville and Slinger for SRX and Indianapolis for IndyCar. That wasn’t the case just 15 years ago, when these types of events included around 30 NASCAR races each year.

I wrote about NASCAR vs F1 last week and reading it again now is interesting to know what happened. I don’t know if any series will surpass NASCAR in a couple of years, but they definitely no longer have the stranglehold they once had in the industry. Most of all, I think NASCAR and its broadcast partners don’t know how to connect with Millennials and below while F1 does. – Michael Finley

NASCAR is still number 1

Stranglehold? Stranglehold may be a bit of an exaggeration, but let’s just say that NASCAR has ruled the American motorsport landscape since IndyCar dampened its chance by committing social suicide and dividing itself in two.

While the Indianapolis 500 may attract 300,000 fans for its marquee event on the IndyCar schedule, the series can never really compete with NASCAR in terms of attention – be it fan or media. The thing is, the immense attention paid to the 500 never results in an entire season of noticeable coverage.

The series hosts a spectacular event once a year, but viewership numbers suggest that fans won’t stay all season. Such a topic is disappointing for IndyCar, as many races are a big theater. By comparison, NASCAR has found a way to keep a pretty consistent number of fans positioning it as the giant of the American motorsport experience.

That the Daytona 500 doesn’t draw as well as before can be argued in recognition of the series doing pretty well. The viewership for NASCAR’s ‘Super Bowl’ is ubiquitous as many iterations of the race have been ravaged by rain delays, making it difficult to gauge actual interest.

The fact that in the wake of the 500 average races around 3 million cannot be ignored. The sports landscape is fragmented and confusing, there are so many choices of what to see coupled with so many choices of how to see it. However, NASCAR still does pretty well – except when the football season kicks off.

The argument here is not that NASCAR is perfect and that nothing is wrong. There are a frustratingly many problems with exercising. The reasons fans quit are lengthy: the playoffs, the 550hp package, the lack of a varied schedule, lack of driver engagement with the fans, but perhaps one of the overlooked aspects is how NASCAR sells.

Reigning cup winner Chase Elliott noted that one of the things the Drive to Survive series did on Netflix was portray the series with Gravitas. His comments to Jeff Gluck of The Athletic showed both an appreciation of the positive treatment of F1 by the streaming giant compared to the stupidity given to NASCAR.

Elliot realized, “It’s like, ‘This isn’t funny; That is real.’ And then the next thing was a comedy sketch for NASCAR (the Netflix comedy series “The Crew”), which somehow further confirmed the outside opinion that we just turn left for fun and don’t put anything else behind it. “

Elliott’s dejection is one of the common marketing problems at NASCAR. Instead of selling NASCAR as a serious product that celebrates the skills of the driver and the hard work of the pit crew and engineers, and the lives of everyone involved, it often sells itself. The goal is a lowest common denominator rather than a solid middle ground.

There is a concept in teaching that students respond to how you teach them. If the teacher thinks the students are stupid and so teaches, even the brightest students will face challenges in overcoming the environment. When a teacher believes the students are intelligent and treats them that way, even the most challenged tend to fight to get better. The same type of idea could be the best to apply to NASCAR marketing and you could thank F1 for showing them how to do it.

Formula 1 put on a spectacular performance last weekend when it visited COTA in Texas. It was without a doubt a lovely event that showed how the sport has become more popular. The thing is, however, the COTA reaction was the clash of a brilliant title race between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton, two teams at their peak – Red Bull and Mercedes, the hype of DtS benefiting from people searching for content while they were locked in during the pandemic and felt that something special was about to happen. This is not a recipe that can be maintained every year.

NASCAR still rules.

It got lost in too short a time with way too many changes and this type of interruption not only leaves a lot of fans confused but also raises questions about what the sport is actually doing. Incremental changes are a much better way to sustain and grow.

NASCAR sport has not lost its position as king in the US, rather many fans think that the king has no clothes. The king is not naked, but in the process of changing.

The culmination of all changes in NASCAR will manifest itself over the next year, and maybe everyone will finally stop tinkering with the product on the track and instead focus on getting back to the fans. There is no reason why the sport cannot fill its mark all over again. – Ava Hutson Ladner

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