If it ain't broke, fix it anyway: NASCAR 2017 Thread

The dropoff is a reflection of the decline of car culture. All forms of racing - not just NASCAR - are struggling to find an audience as baby boomers age out and millenials and the generation behind them, which is starting to come of age, have very little interest in cars beyond being a tool to get them from point a to point b.

That's not to say that NASCAR hasn't made some mistakes along the way to hasten its decline, but there's really nothing they could do to bring back the hundred thousand plus crowds week in and week out.

 

What has NASCAR done with ticket prices over the past decade or so? Have they priced out a lot of their customers? I saw something similar with the NCAA dicking around with the lacrosse championships. Prices went way up, Final Four sites became inconvenient (Foxborough - and another reason why I hate the Patriots), easier to watch it on TV, and the 2008 recession surely didn't help. Probably a combination of lots of factors.

Surprising though - I had no idea NASCAR had that big of a downturn.

 

It's not as much about the pricing as the product.

Too many races of the same length at too many cookie-cutter tracks with cookie-cutter cars that can't pass because of aerodynamic downforce. The season runs from February to November and every race is televised, so why spend money on gas, food and hotels that jack up their rates on race weekends, sitting in huge traffic jams, just to sit on aluminum bleachers crammed together when it's free on TV? Unless you don't get NBCSN.

They expanded too far, too fast and listened to marketing "experts" instead of their fan base, because they were the darlings of Madison Avenue for a short while and chased the money grab. At the same time, they pissed off the long-time faithful by moving the iconic Southern 500 to California, closed North Wilkesboro and Rockingham, took a race from Atlanta, messed with Bristol and generally gimmicked up the sport until it's totally unrecognizable to anyone who rooted for Richard, Cale, Bobby, Bill or Davey.

Some of the brightest engineers on the planet work in NASCAR, and none of them can figure out that nobody wants to watch soccer mom sedans with V-8 engines any more. Apparently Ford, Chevrolet and Toyota still think there's enough value to waste on it -- or don't have a better option.

An irrelevant sport just getting more irrelevant by the day.

 

Some of the tracks have tried to mitigate the high ticket prices by discounting kids tickets. At Dega, youth prices are like $50 off with the purchase of an adult ticket. Bristol had all kids tickets for $10 when I looked the other day. And unlike any other sportsball event, you can bring in all the food and drink you can stuff into a cooler provided none of it is in glass bottles.

Where you really get soaked is hotel rooms, particularly at the rural tracks where the town's entire economy depends on what it can vacuum up 1-2 weekends a year from race fans.

Keep in mind too that at any race that doesn't sell out, the smaller crowds will look twice as bad on TV as for stick and ball sports because the worst seats are up front.

 

One of my old colleagues had to stay in Boone one time for the Bristol race and commute. And it was still expensive as all hell.

 

No joke, I actually took Lebron James to Bristol for a NASCAR race, back in the day. You can pretty much insert here all the racial stereotypes you can imagine, but the crowd was the largest I've ever seen.*

*I didn't attend Trump's inaugural, but, still, Bristol had a huge crowd.

 

That Vols-Hokies game saved their ass in terms of making budget. Stands were half full for the spring race last year, which looks positively awful in a 160k-seat facility.

 

Well, it ain't like that backing's permanent. It'll dry up too if attendance and TV rating trends continue.

I wouldn't be shocked if we eventually see NASCAR "go away", or at least return to the niche regional thing it was before its boom. The sport only has deep roots in the Southeast, elsewhere it was sort of like a gigantic fad that burst onto the scene for a couple decades, but now we've grown bored and tired of it. And the nature of the sport is really not well-suited at all to the way minds of millenials (and presumably future generations) work.

 

Echoing Moddy's Bristol experience. It's no longer a Ramada Limited, but it's still a dump. However, the Peerless Steak House across the street is mighty fine eating.

NASCAR has a lot of those stops. Pocono was a 1960s Holiday Inn with original bedspreads, wallpaper and carpet. Martinsville's "media hotel" one year was the Motel 6, with bulletproof glass between you and the desk clerk. Not to mention the Racing Associates tractor trucks idling all night right outside the room. I wound up in the SAME ROOM at the Childersburg, Ala., Days Inn for six consecutive Talladega races. (I was tempted to leave food in the refrigerator, just to see if it was still there the next time.)

You can't even get a dumpy motel anywhere close to the tracks at Michigan (stay instead in Ann Arbor), Watkins Glen (Ithaca), Kentucky (Florence) or Iowa (Des Moines).

 

Attendance at the New Hampshire races has held up better than some places, for the reason it's a possible day trip with no overnight stay for anyone living in Greater Boston. Only 75 miles away.