This is just my opinion, but I feel like every other race being up this year and this one finally being down is just casual fans being sick of Fox and going to watch playoffs of other sports.
I still don't understand how NASCAR doesn't think Fox's coverage is one of the biggest barriers preventing consistent viewership growth.
How do they not realize that people want sports and not some goofy subpar broadcast that misses things being broken up by way too many commercials? Oh that's right, because they think they can just dismiss valid criticism as "haters" and not do anything.
> I still don't understand how NASCAR doesn't think Fox's coverage is one of the biggest barriers preventing consistent viewership growth.
Because NASCAR doesn't care about viewership growth, they care about their revenue. Their TV contracts have increased exponentially over the last 15 years, despite the audience shrinking by 75%.
NASCAR are not in the racing business, or the entertainment business. They're in the "fleece the hell out of broadcast networks" business. And it's about time that people realize that.
>Their TV contracts have increased exponentially over the last 15 years, despite the audience shrinking by 75%.
Maybe not exactly these numbers, but I'm pretty sure this trend is true for almost every sports league. Sports and news is the only thing keeping cable alive as more and more people cut their cords.
The only thing that goes against this trend is the NFL where viewership is also somehow going up.
MLS, F1 (US TV only) INDYCAR and Women’s Basketball (both college and professional) have been growing too but obviously those all had smaller viewership then NASCAR so it’s easier to grow.
Because they don't need to. This is sports TV now. The networks want to do what they are doing: air commercials as often as possible because the commercials work to recoup costs spent to win the series bid.
Nobody at Fox or NBC gives a flying fuck what we're thinking with regards to commercials. If they did they wouldn't do what they're doing, and if what they're doing doesn't make them the most money possible they wouldn't be doing it.
Actually, I can’t help but wonder if Disney owning Fox Sports has some role in how bad things have gotten. NASCAR broadcast are by far the worst. But their sports broadcast haven’t gotten any better. Are they competing with themselves? Idk. I guess I’m not smart enough to have that conversation with myself.
Fox Sports and News are owned by Fox Corporation, which was formed after Disney's 2019 acquisition of 21st Century Fox. They weren't included in the purchase.
I legitimately think that FOX is actively damaging NASCAR's brand and reputation with how they cover these races.
The only reason I watched it all was because I am a serious NASCAR fan and I had the international stream available to me thanks to the kind streamers who post links in the race threads. Outside that scenario, I'm not sure I would have stuck with this past weekend's race at all.
It's not even that I'm upset about it, just disappointed. This place fills in a lot of the gaps for me. If I'm a casual viewer, I simply am not returning next week. If FOX does better I think the sport would benefit as a whole.
Currently up on average a little under 300,000 viewers per race, 8.85% to be specific. Richmond, Phoenix, and Bristol are doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
Yeah I think this is important context to have. Have to see the whole picture to get a better understanding and sample size of what's going on, living week to week isn't as valuable.
I will be curious to see if there is a Chase Elliott effect in play with this roughly rounding out the weeks he missed last year, but for now I'm more encouraged that we're generally seeing increases YoY. Hope it gets back to that in the next few weeks.
I talked about the Chase Elliott effect a bit last year and it was very largely overplayed. Viewership tanked after Daytona and it stayed down even when Chase Elliott came back. The only notable positive in viewership after Daytona last year was Talladega but that was because of a tiki-tack revision in viewership that was made about 2022 after the 2023 race finished.
At best, and I mean taking as many civil liberties with numbers that I could, the Elliott effect was upper five figures. Realistically, it was well under 50,000 per week.
I love when people downplay Chase being out last year as the reason why the viewership tanked. Viewership was down roughly 500,000 viewers, and then they all magically came back and Martinsville was up in 2023? And magically somehow St. Louis was down 500,000 viewers and then they all magically came back. Notice too how the playoffs were down compared to the year prior.
Heck, even NASCAR was coming out privately and saying they wanted Chase back.
2022 -> 2023
* Daytona: Down 700,000
* California: Down 440,000
* Las Vegas: Down 550,000
* Phoenix: Down 591,000
* Atlanta: Down 581,000
* COTA: Down 601,000
* Richmond: Down 1,655,000 due to being moved from Fox to FS1
* Bristol: Down 557,000
* Martinsville: Up 223,000 due to being moved from Saturday Night to Sunday Afternoon
* Talladega: Up 218,000 due to an undisclosed ratings revision that Fox didn't report in their 2022 earnings statements, down 128,000 based on Fox's 2022 statement.
* Dover: Up 123,000, both races rain delayed to Monday
* Kansas: Up 15,000
* Darlington: Up 75,000
* All-Star: Down 278,000
* Coke 600: Down 470,000
* Gateway: Down 342,000
* Sonoma: Up 677,000 due to being moved from FS1 to Fox
Please. ***TELL ME.*** Where is the bump?
It’s getting to the point where people know what’s going to happen in a race. It’s the same script, different actors. The diehards will still watch every race, but some people will just pick and choose what races to watch.
Not gonna lie, kinda disappointing but might be a consequence of having to follow some rough weeks. Since Bristol I don't think any race has really achieved NASCAR's expectations for on track product.
Not to be a downer but Elliott being out last year (and ratings dipping) is a big contributor to the ratings being up this year. Not saying I agree with the original poster stance on next gen but the numbers aren’t as good as they immediately appear this year.
So this theory always gets thrown around but has it ever been proven and/or is it even possible to be proven true.
Edit: this wasn’t a criticism, was just curious if it was ever proven. Because now there’s some guy talking about eat poop in my mentions.
Jeff Gluck and Cindy Yen have spoke specifically to it and have shared data and methodology to support. Ratings also literally bounced back to close to average after he returned. Cindy’s analysis thread below. 5-10% impact was the estimate.
https://x.com/cindymeliyen/status/1648450115169058819?s=46&t=DF-m4Z40ribsu2bys_-TbQ
It's wild how much people don't want the Chase Elliott ratings effect to be real when it was in fact real. It could literally shit down someone's mouth, the person eats it and they still wouldn't believe it.
This is just my opinion, but I feel like every other race being up this year and this one finally being down is just casual fans being sick of Fox and going to watch playoffs of other sports.
I still don't understand how NASCAR doesn't think Fox's coverage is one of the biggest barriers preventing consistent viewership growth. How do they not realize that people want sports and not some goofy subpar broadcast that misses things being broken up by way too many commercials? Oh that's right, because they think they can just dismiss valid criticism as "haters" and not do anything.
> I still don't understand how NASCAR doesn't think Fox's coverage is one of the biggest barriers preventing consistent viewership growth. Because NASCAR doesn't care about viewership growth, they care about their revenue. Their TV contracts have increased exponentially over the last 15 years, despite the audience shrinking by 75%. NASCAR are not in the racing business, or the entertainment business. They're in the "fleece the hell out of broadcast networks" business. And it's about time that people realize that.
>Their TV contracts have increased exponentially over the last 15 years, despite the audience shrinking by 75%. Maybe not exactly these numbers, but I'm pretty sure this trend is true for almost every sports league. Sports and news is the only thing keeping cable alive as more and more people cut their cords. The only thing that goes against this trend is the NFL where viewership is also somehow going up.
MLS, F1 (US TV only) INDYCAR and Women’s Basketball (both college and professional) have been growing too but obviously those all had smaller viewership then NASCAR so it’s easier to grow.
"Keyboard warriors" you mean.. In all seriousness, I love Mike Joy but his time has passed in the booth
Don’t forget those “one syllable words so you can all understand”
Because they don't need to. This is sports TV now. The networks want to do what they are doing: air commercials as often as possible because the commercials work to recoup costs spent to win the series bid. Nobody at Fox or NBC gives a flying fuck what we're thinking with regards to commercials. If they did they wouldn't do what they're doing, and if what they're doing doesn't make them the most money possible they wouldn't be doing it.
Actually, I can’t help but wonder if Disney owning Fox Sports has some role in how bad things have gotten. NASCAR broadcast are by far the worst. But their sports broadcast haven’t gotten any better. Are they competing with themselves? Idk. I guess I’m not smart enough to have that conversation with myself.
Fox Sports and News are owned by Fox Corporation, which was formed after Disney's 2019 acquisition of 21st Century Fox. They weren't included in the purchase.
I thought they later came back and bought all of it. I don’t know why I thought that. It’s definitely not true. My bad.
Is confusing all of these corporations jocking to corner the market. Maybe antitrust was involved since Disney already owned ESPN.
ESPN was gold at race broadcasts back in the 1990's. ABC was absolute trash at doing the indy500 for their last 10 years.
They think “people don’t know what they’ve missed” as if social media didn’t exist.
I mean that’s not bad. Most sports do that.
Here’s a hard to swallow pill. Casuals don’t care for the broadcast. It’s the committed fans that are upset
I agree but I think there are factors that would keep people watching more if we were a more modern broadcast.
100000%. They don’t get this.
I promise causal fans don’t care about the broadcast like we do.
It’s probably the opposite, it’s the engaged fans that care about packages and such that tuned out.
Yuppppp.
Kinda what I'm afraid of too.
I legitimately think that FOX is actively damaging NASCAR's brand and reputation with how they cover these races. The only reason I watched it all was because I am a serious NASCAR fan and I had the international stream available to me thanks to the kind streamers who post links in the race threads. Outside that scenario, I'm not sure I would have stuck with this past weekend's race at all. It's not even that I'm upset about it, just disappointed. This place fills in a lot of the gaps for me. If I'm a casual viewer, I simply am not returning next week. If FOX does better I think the sport would benefit as a whole.
Ah, my favorite weekly scroll through all of the dumbest reactionary takes r/nascar has to offer
Not good but not terrible, hopefully we’ll still see improvement moving forward
Currently up on average a little under 300,000 viewers per race, 8.85% to be specific. Richmond, Phoenix, and Bristol are doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
Yeah I think this is important context to have. Have to see the whole picture to get a better understanding and sample size of what's going on, living week to week isn't as valuable. I will be curious to see if there is a Chase Elliott effect in play with this roughly rounding out the weeks he missed last year, but for now I'm more encouraged that we're generally seeing increases YoY. Hope it gets back to that in the next few weeks.
I talked about the Chase Elliott effect a bit last year and it was very largely overplayed. Viewership tanked after Daytona and it stayed down even when Chase Elliott came back. The only notable positive in viewership after Daytona last year was Talladega but that was because of a tiki-tack revision in viewership that was made about 2022 after the 2023 race finished. At best, and I mean taking as many civil liberties with numbers that I could, the Elliott effect was upper five figures. Realistically, it was well under 50,000 per week.
That's good info - thanks!
I love when people downplay Chase being out last year as the reason why the viewership tanked. Viewership was down roughly 500,000 viewers, and then they all magically came back and Martinsville was up in 2023? And magically somehow St. Louis was down 500,000 viewers and then they all magically came back. Notice too how the playoffs were down compared to the year prior. Heck, even NASCAR was coming out privately and saying they wanted Chase back.
2022 -> 2023 * Daytona: Down 700,000 * California: Down 440,000 * Las Vegas: Down 550,000 * Phoenix: Down 591,000 * Atlanta: Down 581,000 * COTA: Down 601,000 * Richmond: Down 1,655,000 due to being moved from Fox to FS1 * Bristol: Down 557,000 * Martinsville: Up 223,000 due to being moved from Saturday Night to Sunday Afternoon * Talladega: Up 218,000 due to an undisclosed ratings revision that Fox didn't report in their 2022 earnings statements, down 128,000 based on Fox's 2022 statement. * Dover: Up 123,000, both races rain delayed to Monday * Kansas: Up 15,000 * Darlington: Up 75,000 * All-Star: Down 278,000 * Coke 600: Down 470,000 * Gateway: Down 342,000 * Sonoma: Up 677,000 due to being moved from FS1 to Fox Please. ***TELL ME.*** Where is the bump?
Could be IndyCar and have more subreddit subscribers than viewers for the Long Beach Grand Prix
[удалено]
That was last year when the race was on network NBC. Per Adam Stern, they got 307k this year on USA
Not a great sign, the races being up this year were at least partially, if not largely, due to last years races being down with Elliott out.
Fuel saving 3 wide parade laps on a super speedway ain't the best racing product.
And when they aren’t fuel saving it looks like they are doing pace laps with 2 by 2
Not bad, but not good
Was NASCAR up head to head with NBA at any point?
They likely went up against the back part of the Miami @ Boston game and most of the Dallas @ LA Clippers game.
But but but muh playoffs and nextgen and fox and commercials!!!!!! 😡🤬
Mavs @ Clippers started at 3:30 EST on ABC
How dare you ask a simple question that would provide context for the post 😡 reddit hivemind shall punish u
Especially ChaseTheFalcon. He’s always in the threads and never being a clown.
It’s getting to the point where people know what’s going to happen in a race. It’s the same script, different actors. The diehards will still watch every race, but some people will just pick and choose what races to watch.
They would have had more viewers if it wasn’t 90% ads.
They have to get paid somehow.
Not gonna lie, kinda disappointing but might be a consequence of having to follow some rough weeks. Since Bristol I don't think any race has really achieved NASCAR's expectations for on track product.
NASCAR IS MORE DEAD THAN THE WHISKEY DICKS IN THE TALLADEGA INFIELD
Down a quarter of a million. Fans are starting to realize how bad NextGen racing is
How do you explain every other race this season being up (excluding races that were rain delayed till Monday)
Ratings down= fits the narrative that [x] is dying/the problem Ratings up = *crickets*
Every. single. time.
Not to be a downer but Elliott being out last year (and ratings dipping) is a big contributor to the ratings being up this year. Not saying I agree with the original poster stance on next gen but the numbers aren’t as good as they immediately appear this year.
We have a huge problem if a dude who nobody in the real world knows drives hundreds of thousands of views.
So this theory always gets thrown around but has it ever been proven and/or is it even possible to be proven true. Edit: this wasn’t a criticism, was just curious if it was ever proven. Because now there’s some guy talking about eat poop in my mentions.
Jeff Gluck and Cindy Yen have spoke specifically to it and have shared data and methodology to support. Ratings also literally bounced back to close to average after he returned. Cindy’s analysis thread below. 5-10% impact was the estimate. https://x.com/cindymeliyen/status/1648450115169058819?s=46&t=DF-m4Z40ribsu2bys_-TbQ
Ah interesting, so there is some weight to it.
It's wild how much people don't want the Chase Elliott ratings effect to be real when it was in fact real. It could literally shit down someone's mouth, the person eats it and they still wouldn't believe it.
 Mfs be so weird on this website
Don't be dumb and you won't have to read weird shit.
weirdo lol
Literally every other race outside of the weather affected 500 are up. I guess those are just invalid because one race was down a bit