While NASCAR Takes Stock, Racing's Popularity Wanes
Officials Say Top Concern Is 'Pushing Content'

By Liz Clarke
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 4, 2007

Brian France, NASCAR's third-generation chief executive, was bullish amid signs that stock-car racing's high-octane growth was sputtering last season. He dismissed a roughly 10 percent drop in TV ratings as an anomaly, laying responsibility largely on NBC, which he said failed to vigorously promote the sport in the final year of its broadcast agreement.

France was even more bold in February, predicting on the eve of the Daytona 500 that NASCAR's TV ratings would rebound in 2007. Stock-car racing was poised for great things, France said, and he enumerated several initiatives he felt would help the sport regain its momentum. Among them:

¿ Tweaks to the postseason Chase for the Nextel Cup that gave drivers more points for winning races;

¿ The debut of Toyota, the first foreign nameplate, which would make the fields more competitive;

¿ And, most importantly, an eight-year TV deal that featured the return of ESPN, which France said was poised to bring NASCAR to the casual sports fan by saturating its 17 "platforms" (including television, Web site, radio, talk shows, magazine) with stock-car races and personalities.

But with three races remaining in the season, France's rosy forecast hasn't materialized.

NASCAR's TV ratings have continued to slide. Through last weekend's race in Atlanta, NASCAR was averaging a 4.2 household rating compared with a 4.6 in 2006. And last year's average was down from the sport's all-time high of 5.3 in 2005.

Even crafty camera angles haven't been able to ignore the empty seats at many venues -- particularly the larger superspeedways where overzealous promoters built grandstands faster than demand dictated.

And if the NASCAR blogosphere is any indication, many longtime fans are chafing over many of the changes designed to attract a broader audience -- from later start times to appeal to West Coast viewers to tougher penalties for unsportsmanlike behavior.

But according to NASCAR officials, no alarm bells are ringing at the sport's Daytona Beach headquarters. Naturally they wish TV ratings were up, but they're playing down the significance, arguing that ratings fail to account for the myriad ways in which tech-savvy NASCAR fans consume the sport.

"If TV ratings were the focus, that would be the story," said Dick Glover, NASCAR's vice president of broadcasting and new media. "But it's like a painting. If you look at a corner of a painting, you might come to one conclusion. If you step back and look at the whole thing, you might come to another."

According to Glover, the bigger picture is that NASCAR fans are devouring the sport in record numbers -- whether through Web sites, daily update shows or pre-race shows.

ESPN senior coordinating producer Rich Feinberg agrees.

"Years ago, you would really measure success primarily based on television ratings, but that's just not how it works any longer," Feinberg said. "The name of the game in the year 2007 and beyond is pushing content out to people as many different ways and places as you can. There's no one better at that than ESPN."

Artie Bulgrin, ESPN's head of research, can't explain why the cable network's NASCAR ratings are lower than NBC's last year. Bulgrin suggests the ratings, while disappointing, obscure an encouraging story of a demographics shift. Ratings are down among men 55 and older, he says, but up among viewers most coveted by advertisers -- males 18 to 49.

Regardless, NASCAR remains the second-biggest television draw in sports, trailing the NFL. Its average attendance, though down in spots, is 130,000 -- the largest in sports. And that's an enviable spot to be in.

According to television consultant Mike Trager, a downturn was inevitable given NASCAR's dramatic growth over the last decade.

"Most of the ratings for most major league sports have been declining steadily over the last four or five years," Trager says. "NASCAR reached a level of maturity on television, and now they're being affected like everyone else. I don't see it as dire at all because the level they're settling in is double and triple that of other sports."

The key question is whether NASCAR's second year of declining ratings represents a plateau or the start of a more serious slide. Texas Motor Speedway President Eddie Gossage is confident it's the former.

"It's not possible for any business to continue the unbelievable upward spiral we've enjoyed," Gossage says. "At some point it had to level off."

To Jon Ackley, who teaches a course on NASCAR economics at Virginia Commonwealth, it's unclear. He's also unsure what the drop in viewership represents, but he has plenty of theories.

For starters, Ackley suspects that NASCAR's redesigned Car of Tomorrow has robbed fans of a key reason for caring about the outcome of races -- brand identification -- now that there's no substantive distinction between a Ford, Chevy, Dodge or Toyota. The redesigned car was intended to make the racing safer, save money for car owners and jazz up the competition by making it easier to pass. Yet drivers have mocked its aesthetics, groused about its handling and said it makes it harder, rather than easier, to pass.

Others feel NASCAR officials are snuffing out the drivers' personalities by overzealously policing rough driving during races and emotional outbursts afterward. Gossage is among them, though he empathizes with NASCAR's plight.

"You can't have guys throwing punches without being penalized to some degree," Gossage concedes. "But to what degree? The beauty of this sport is that it's the original 'Extreme Game.' There's a certain element of recklessness if you're running 200 miles an hour and there are no lanes, no blinkers on the cars, no horn to blow to tell the guy in front of you to get out of the way. That's part of its attraction."

A column about NASCAR's declining TV ratings on SceneDaily.com, an authoritative source for many longtime fans, drew a torrent of responses from fans explaining why they were tuning out.

Wrote Tom Mikulski: "Most races are boring because they can't race like [the late Dale Earnhardt, Rusty Wallace and Darrell Waltrip] used to without worrying about fines for rough driving. NASCAR died the same day Dale Sr. died."

In the view of Charlotte-based marketing executive Max Muhleman, all of what seems to be ailing NASCAR can be fixed if the sport keeps working at it. Even if not, the sport is in an enviable position.

"If we looked at it over the last 25 years, NASCAR still earns the gold ring for Most Improved Professional Sport," he says.