Nascar, Once a Cultural Icon, Hits the Skids; Stock-car racing's popularity declines

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Last edited Wed Feb 22, 2017, 09:22 PM - Edit history (1)

For a change, here's a story that's not about *****. This was on the front page of the Wednesday print edition, but if you're looking it up at the library, it went online yesterday. It's pay per view, even when I went in through Google News. I'm going in through a Proquest account at the library.

http://search.proquest.com/nationalnewsexpanded/docview/1870269680/fulltext/948CFA42A72B4395PQ/1?accountid=xxxxx

You'll need your own account number to see the article. Ask your local public library how you can do this.

The article says that "the first big race of the new season {is} set for Sunday...." I don't follow NASCAR,* but even I know that's the Daytona 500. What I don't get is, why does NASCAR start the season with its biggest race? It's like starting a season with the World Series or the Super Bowl, and every subsequent event is of lower status. Anyone?

* According to a brief Google search, every source I saw calls it NASCAR, not Nascar. Which is to be expected, as NASCAR is an acronym for the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing. Take it up with TWSJ.

Nascar, Once a Cultural Icon, Hits the Skids; Stock-car racing's popularity declines amid 'economics and demographics'

Stock-car racing’s popularity declines amid ‘economics and demographics’

By Tripp Mickle and Valerie Bauerlein

[e-mail]
@trippmickle

[e-mail]
@vbauerlein

Updated Feb. 21, 2017 10:14 a.m. ET

Nascar threw a bash at Kansas Speedway in October to thank Sprint Corp. for being stock-car racing’s top sponsor for 13 years. More than 800 Sprint employees received hot dogs, burgers and seats to a nail-biting race. ... One thing was missing: a new sponsor. Despite knowing for two years that Sprint was leaving, Nascar didn't announce a replacement until December, when it said energy-drink maker Monster Beverage Corp . had won naming rights to the top-tier racing circuit. ... Monster paid about $20 million, below Nascar's asking price of $35 million and nowhere close to the original goal of $100 million, according to television and racing-industry executives familiar with the new contract. A Nascar spokesman wouldn't comment.



With the first big race of the new season set for Sunday, Nascar's problems seem to have spun out of control. ... About a decade ago, the sport was a cultural icon and inspired the hit car-racing comedy movie "Talladega Nights," starring Will Ferrell. Since 2005, Nascar's television viewership is down 45%, according to an analysis of Nielsen ratings by SportsBusiness Daily, a trade publication. That is twice as large as the National Basketball Association's decline from its peak. National Football League viewership has fallen 8%, Nielsen data show.

Tracks have torn out about a fourth of their seats to look fuller but still have wide stretches of empty bleachers on race days. Nascar's fan base, largely working-class and white, is getting older overall and was hit harder by the recession than the more-affluent fan bases in other major sports. ... "There's no magic pill for this one," says Ed Rensi, a former Nascar racing-team owner who was a longtime head of U.S. operations for McDonald's Corp. "It's about economics and demographics."

Many people in the sport blame the France family, which runs Nascar and controls racetrack company International Speedway Corp. ... Long adored for turning fender-crunching races between moonshiners into the nation's richest and most popular form of motor sports, the founding family is now being criticized by drivers and team owners, who fear the Frances are incapable of reversing the fade in fan interest and retreat by sponsors.
....

Write to Tripp Mickle at [e-mail] and Valerie Bauerlein at [e-mail]

[Watchfoxheadexplodes]

1. NASCARS Willy nilly way of rule changes is reason for decline

Since the advent of restrictions on super speedway and the death of Earnhardt Sr. NASCAR spends every season trying to make each fan faction happy.

[FSogol]

4. Nah, Millenials don't want to spend an entire day at a race watching someone drive in an oval 200

times. They can catch the highlights in minutes and have time for other things.

[GentryDixon]

29. You are correct.

My husband grew up in the south, so NASCAR is in his blood. He is not a redneck as some people in this thread have alluded, but he does love the sport. I have been to many races over the years as well. My last one was in Las Vegas shortly after they opened that track. It took longer to get out of the parking lot than the rain canceled race. I told my hubby never again.

The death of Dale Earnhardt changed the sport. That and the ever loving chase of the dollar. The old stock car racing I remember from years ago does not exist. I remember being at Darlington hanging off the fence trying to get a good pic of Richard Petty as he was coming around under a caution. The security guard ripped me off the fence and threatened to throw me out. Hell, they were barely moving! We used to come back from the track with black faces from the tire rubber, but it was quite thrilling in those early days.

He is at our home in NC, and I am sitting here in Utah, but I am sure he will be watching, or at least listening to the race. He has been to Daytona one time. He took our 5th wheel down with his brothers & spouses. I on the other hand was back in Utah working.

[orwell]

2. People are getting tired of watching cars go around in a circle?

Who'd a thunk it?

[rurallib]

8. not to mention - watching someone drive a car?

move in and out of traffic to gain advantage?
I live on a highway - I can see that anytime day or night.

[Blue Idaho]

3. Red Necks in drug and alcohol treatment programs? nt.

[HAB911]

5. Does that mean we can get some of our tax $$ back if they finally fail????

[angrychair]

6. Ignorant redneck kkk rallies

Are not what they used to be...yes I have been to a couple different track, Richmond International and Talladega. Confederate flags and the "N" word fly. Went to each track once and will never go again.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

7. Be honest. People only watched it for the crashes.

Once they got beyond that, it's just cars driving around in circles for 2 hours. Something that can be experienced in person by driving on any expressway in a major American city.

[dalton99a]

9. Dummest 'sport' ever

[LanternWaste]

15. Five will get you ten you're unable to spot your own irony.

Five will get you ten you're unable to spot your own irony.

[dalton99a]

17. It was intentional

[jmowreader]

36. There's a far dumber one

This sport seems to be somewhat popular, and I have no idea why: ten players on one team run around on a big grass-covered rectangle kicking a ball toward the end of the field while ten players on the other team try to stop them from getting there. If they do get there, one guy kicks the ball to a player on the other team who's standing in a net. That player catches the ball and throws it back down the field so his team can try to do what the other team just did. Every so often the player in the net won't catch the ball. When that happens the team who kicked the ball gets one point, and they put footage of this remarkable feat on the news in every country in the world because scoring a point in this game is harder than getting Donald Trump to not do something stupid. This sport is governed by a rulebook that's bigger than the Internal Revenue Code, and if you break one of the 50 million rules in it they show you a colored card - they HAVE to do it this way because there are 22 players on the field at any one time and no two of them speak the same language - and you go stand in the corner. At the end of the game, they decide who actually won the thing by having a "penalty kick shootout" which they could have just started the game with and been done with it.

If you know what you're looking at, stock car racing is easily as cerebral - if not more so - as soccer or chess. This weekend's race would be an excellent primer - pick one car and try to figure out what he's going to do.

If you think it's just forty rednecks driving around in circles, you'll never get it.

[DefenseLawyer]

10. I think they should go back to "stock" cars.

I'm not a fan of Nascar, but I'm enough of a car guy that I would find it a lot more interesting if they drove actual production cars.

[rickford66]

13. Ya beat me to it.

There would be a lot of real crashes and injuries, but that's what the crowd goes to see.

[NCTraveler]

20. +1

That would get me back watching. Maybe not all of the time but I would watch more.

[jmowreader]

23. People would get killed if they did that

The forces a car withstands in one of those big wrecks are roughly equivalent to dropping it on its nose from fifty feet in the air. If you tried that in a production car you'd be having funerals in the infield. With the cars they have now, the driver walks to the ambulance on the way to the infield care center then gives an interview as he leaves the care center.

You want to see the real reason for the decline? Go to http://www.nascar.com and look at the 2017 rules changes. I have been a NASCAR fan for over 20 years and I cannot figure out how this new rules package works. A new fan doesn't have a chance.

[DefenseLawyer]

28. There were 4 fatalities in NASCAR in the 70's

There were 3 in the 90's and 2 in the 2000's. Not exactly a huge decline. You could incorporate modern safety technology and control the speeds to avoid the widespread carnage you predict. It would be a somewhat different sport than the high tech racing they have now. By the way, I didn't mean to suggest that was the reason for the decline, only that for me, it would be a more interesting sport. My guess is the main reason for the decline is that people are broke, but I haven't studied the issue.

[hunter]

11. Younger people can't afford cars to tinker with, and modern cars can't be tinkered with anyways...

... unless an amateur mechanic is willing to become a software engineer too.

This complexity of modern automobiles makes it more difficult for ordinary people to identify with the sport.

My brothers and I always had a car or two to play with, and motorcycles too. An assistant manager at a fast food place occasionally had had enough spare change to buy car parts from the junkyard or J.C. Whitney catalog.

Hell, I once replaced the head gasket of my little Toyota in a K-mart parking lot.

Today as the middle class disappears NASCAR is becoming something more like yacht racing.

[uponit7771]

39. +1, there was a growing tuner community but then it went away with fragmentation of the ECU's of

... cars.

I'm thinking cars were more affordable back in the day

[Aristus]

12. Good. No more smug bloviating from rednecks who insist that

driving very fast and turning left a lot is a 'sport'. Hell, I do that just getting to work every morning.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

14. My drive to work is twice as complicated. In addition to making left turns, ...

... I have to make right turns.

This gives me the right to whine like a Formula 1 driver.

[Aristus]

16. We should get some sponsorship.

Sponsored drives to work every day would increase my income immensely.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

22. An Einstein Bagels decal would look nice on my car. For a price. nt

[Thor_MN]

40. My drive is filled with a combo of 112 year olds and angry kids that think only a conspiracy

is keeping them from a NASCAR sponsorship. The old people drive in the left hand lane 10 MPH under the limit and the young idiots dart in and out of every lane. Saw a moron merge into a space that most people wouldn't try parallel into this week. Who wants to spend time on the weekend watching other people drive when I do that live about 10 hours a week?

[NightWatcher]

18. It's expensive, boring, and there are no big personalities or feuds anymore

There's no drama in it anymore, plus all the drivers look the same.

My family is from the Carolinas and I have met and my family has known most of the original racers. We've had racers in the family too. Hell, my grandfather knew so many of these boys because they ran shine together after my other great uncles made in stills out in the woods.



We look alike, we talk alike, we are alike....

[uponit7771]

41. +1, I don't see the lack of diversity as being a good thing when it comes to NASCAR.

[Tikki]

19. To me it glorifies...wasting gas and making emissions.

Tikki

[Blue_Tires]

21. Too many rules, too many events, too many weak venues

Formula 1 is going through the same issues... And don't get me started on that bullshit Race for the Chase playoff...

[jmowreader]

25. Midseason rules changes too

There's a reason every Cup team arrives at the track with 50 spoilers and 20 sets of springs - all different. NASCAR is famous for changing the configuration of one make after they arrive at the track.

[JI7]

24. hopefully football is next

[50 Shades Of Blue]

26. +1

[ret5hd]

27. I bet THIS guy could give 'em a few ideas!!!

(really really worth the time...and hilarious!)

[bluedigger]

30. Too many redundant events and too long a season.

Most tracks have two races, the season lasts forever, and then there's the "race for points" or whatever they call it to make a "playoff" season that still includes the rest of the field. I don't think rules changes make much difference to the average fan as long as there is competitive racing on the track. Demographics of the fan base and the economy are no help, either, in getting customers to the track.

[nikibatts]

32. And expensive for the unemployed.

[Hoyt]

31. Not interested in any event where confederate flags are prevalent or have to be banned. Besides,

it's really not a "sport." Will be interesting to see if they use driverless cars at some point. Most fans are Trump supporters.

[A HERETIC I AM]

43. "There are only three sports:

bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games. -
Ernest Hemingway

[gratuitous]

33. Does this mean liberal elitists don't have to try to understand NASCAR's appeal anymore?

Because I tried real hard, and was quite unable to "get" NASCAR. I did develop some insights into the type of person who could be fascinated for a couple of hours by watching shiny things going around in a circle, but I don't think that was very helpful, either.

[Johonny]

34. It's not surprising as it basically saturated its market a few years back

There is little room for expansion as other racing circuits dominate outside of the US and the US population interested in auto racing sort of maxed out.

As for why its biggest named race starts the season...tradition. NASCAR wasn't really NASCAR at the time the racing schedule slowly formed and wisely the powers that be never tried to ruin at least that aspect of the sport.

[democratisphere]

35. WOW! I knew NASCAR and other motorsports racing attendance was down

but I never imagined it was to this degree. I really enjoy both asphalt and dirt autoracing in New York and Pennsylvania.

[jmowreader]

37. Why NASCAR starts the season with its biggest race

Auto racing - ANY form of it - is unique among American sports in that every team in the league is on the same field at the same time. You couldn't put all 30 MLB teams, or all 32 NFL teams, on one field, tell them to play and get anything but catastrophe. There are 40 teams in NASCAR's top series, and at the drop of the green flag every one of 'em is right there playing against each other.

NASCAR opens its season with its most prestigious race because the teams are in the best shape they're going to be in all season at the Daytona 500. No other sport can say that about its biggest game - which, for everyone else, is at the end of the season.

[yortsed snacilbuper]

38. Pillbillys.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

42. Sugestion for accessing this article.

I was trying to access an article in The Wall Street Journal. yesterday. they are going to a pay-per-view model for a lot of their content. In the past, I've been able to access TWSJ. articles by going in through Google News. I was not able to do that yesterday. I found that by going in through the author's Twitter feed, I was able to access the article.

For this article, the authors are:

By Tripp Mickle and Valerie Bauerlein

[e-mail]
@trippmickle

[e-mail]
@vbauerlein

[mahatmakanejeeves]

44. NASCAR race at Richmond that sold 112,000 tickets a decade ago is now struggling to fill 60,000 seat

NASCAR race at Richmond that sold 112,000 tickets a decade ago is now struggling to fill 60,000 seats