A Look into NASCAR's Declining Fanbase

It’s no secret that NASCAR audiences are dwindling, both at the track and on television.

It’s easy to blame the economy for the anemic attendance at the track on racedays. Fans -- especially the middle-class that have felt the pinch of the recession – have stayed home on Sundays and watched the action from the comfort of their own homes.

The thing is, they’re not really doing that either.

According to Jim Utter of the Charlotte Observer’s blog, “Lucky Dog,” Nielsen ratings were down staggering amounts for the first three Chase races. New Hampshire’s numbers were down 28 percent, Dover 23 percent and Kansas was down 28 percent as well.

It doesn’t take a genius to realize that something is really wrong and NASCAR is not drawing fans like it once did. But what is it?

I’ve been watching NASCAR religiously – and when I say religiously, I mean missing a grand total of about five Cup races – since then end of the 1992 season.

My grandfather, who I looked up to a great deal, watched NASCAR so I followed suit and have been hooked ever since. So, when I think about NASCAR I get an extremely nostalgic feeling.

NASCAR fans are unique in the respect that they root for a driver, not a team. And drivers, unlike the vast majority of teams in the big four sports – football, baseball, basketball and hockey – have a shelf life.

One day, your favorite driver is going to hang up his helmet, retire and then you’re stuck without a dog in the fight. Even if your favorite player retires – in my case, Cal Ripken Jr. – your favorite team will still be there to hold onto.

When Rusty Wallace retired, there I was, lost without a driver.

I’m guessing a lot of NASCAR fans are in my boat right now. During the early-90s, when NASCAR was making its rise to national prominence, there were faces that fans connected to.

Dale Earnhardt. Ricky Rudd. Bill Elliott. Terry and Bobby Labonte. Darrell and Michael Waltrip.

The only drivers still active – and competitive – from this era are Jeff Gordon, Jeff Burton and Mark Martin and even Martin’s career is coming to a close.

The fans that joined the sport when it started to boom have lost the drivers that they fell in love with and now are searching. Sure, you can latch onto a Kyle Busch, Joey Logano or Kasey Kahne if you’re a fan whose driver’s time has passed, but it’s not the same.

They say, "you never forget your first love." That same sentiment holds true for NASCAR fans. They're just not willing to watch since the driver they loved for so many years is now gone. These fans make up a great deal of the fanbase. Couple that with casual fans who can take or leave sitting down and watching a race and you're bound to have a drastic ratings decrease.

It would be like if the Dallas Cowboys ceased to exist at the exact moment Roger Staubach decided to hang it up. This is why so very many fans flocked to Dale Earnhardt Jr. when Sr. passed away. They loved – and still love – Dale Earnhardt and want to hold onto those amazing, nostalgic feelings that Sr. gave them when he raced.

Today’s fan, for whatever reason, seems to be a much more casual fan and as a whole are less die-hard than those of the previous decade. NASCAR saw this coming and this is why the Chase for the Cup was created. I know there are those who live and breathe NASCAR like I do. We never needed a manufactured reason to watch a race.

NASCAR needed to create a reason to keep these casual types of fans enthralled in the action at the end of the season. But with Jimmie Johnson’s domination the past four years, fans have been turned off by the monotony of it all.

It doesn’t help that the sport’s most popular driver – Little E – has run in the back with the start-and-parks for the majority of the races this season. And, of course, NASCAR throwing phantom debris cautions for hotdog wrappers and dirty Kleenexes when the field gets spread out.

The inevitability of “Four-Time” becoming “Five-Time” is a factor in television viewership being down but the coverage of races hasn’t helped either.

Pre-2001, NASCAR broadcasts were a thing of beauty.

ESPN, ABC, TNN, CBS and TBS all delivered great, credible NASCAR productions from beginning to end. The way races were presented made the viewer feel like each and every race was valued and a spectacle to be witnessed. Almost epic, actually.

Races on television have lost that feel. They almost feel like a sideshow.

Whether it’s the cheesy Hinder music ESPN has played in the past, the less-than-impressive openings or the fact they have way too many analysts crammed into one broadcast, it leaves the viewer’s head spinning.

FOX started this trend with the “Hollywood Hotel” which, at the time, added a little different, fresh perspective to a race. But even FOX, with the addition of "Digger and Friends", has left its production with a less-credible feel to it.

You don’t see woodland creatures on the broadcasts of any other sport on any network. You don’t see Peyton Manning sending you to a commercial break while playing Rock Band while you watch an Indianapolis Colts game.

Die-hard NASCAR fans, who seem to have been forgotten by NASCAR television, long for a professional feel to a race broadcast, not a Broadway production.

NASCAR broadcasts in the early 90s left the blueprint for how a race should be produced, beginning to end.

Just take a look at this CBS intro of the 1998 Daytona 500 and try not to get chills. I haven’t seen a broadcast begin like this in quite sometime. And that’s exactly the problem with the networks that cover NASCAR today. They have forgotten their roots.

They're neither clear nor concise. This 1993 ESPN intro to the Hooter's 500 is another great example of how a broadcast should be done.

The CBS 1994 Michigan 400 intro does it as well. The analysis of the track surface breaking up is superb and the attention to just the storylines and not fluff is something you don't see today.

Fans like me long for the days of a Ken Squier and Ned Jarrett tandem in the booth. Bob Jenkins and Benny Parsons. Eli Gold and Buddy Baker. Not 11 analysts over-analyzing and not allowing the racing speak for itself.

This is just part of the problem, however, and unfortunately it may not be fixable. The fact that old-school NASCAR fans have little to hold onto anymore may be something that haunts NASCAR for the foreseeable future. It’s depressing not to see a better number of fans becoming entranced and excited by the sport that I love so very much.

1994 Michigan 400 -- A Forgotten Classic

On Father’s Day 1994, Rusty Wallace had to overcome a lot to win the Michigan 400.

With temperatures soaring into the mid-90s and a tricky surface in turn 3 and 4 to deal with, Wallace was the class of the field.

But in a race marred by caution flags, the final yellow gave Wallace one last challenge to navigate through.

With Wallace leading by four seconds, and green flag pit stops looming, Bobby Hillin, Jr. spun with 24 laps remaining. Wallace was forced to stay out one lap longer than he wanted under caution before the field pitted. His car rolled down pit road, silent, out of gas.

As his pit crew went to work, Wallace desperately tried to refire the engine as crew chief Buddy Parrott sprayed ether into the engine. Parrott and the crew pushed the No. 2 Miller Genuine Draft Ford down pit road and as the engine finally came to life, Parrott tumbled down pit road.

“I hurt my leg a little bit, but I’ll be alright,” Parrott said, trying to catch his breath. “We just ran her a little tight on gas. What happens is, this whole place is kind of a turn and we fed the fuel to the inside of the car. We were coming in that lap and we would’ve been okay, but then the caution came out.”

After dominating the majority of the race, Wallace was forced to restart 11th.

With just 19 laps remaining, Wallace started behind 21 other cars including the lapped cars inside of the leaders.

As the green flag waved, Mark Martin and Dale Earnhardt battled for the lead and Wallace mounted his charge.

Wallace knifed through the pack, picking up position after position, including a 3-wide pass on the outside that took him from 7th to 3rd in one lap. And after passing Ricky Rudd for 2nd with nine laps to go, he set his sights on Earnhardt.

Coming to three to go, Wallace got a run on Earnhardt and passed him going into turn 3 and proceeded to pull away for his 36th career Winston Cup victory and third in a row.

It was the second time in consecutive weeks that Wallace outdueled Earnhardt. After dominating a week earlier at Pocono, Wallace found himself behind The Intimidator after a late-race caution sent the field to pit road. Earnhardt took two tires to Wallace’s four and the two restarted 1-2 with one lap to go. The green flag flew and Wallace drove under Earnhardt into turn 1 and on to victory.

Wallace led 83 of 200 laps at Michigan, but his performance was overshadowed by the condition of the track. A new patch of asphalt in turns 3 and 4 was unable to set properly because of the heat and was coming apart throughout the race.

The surface caused problems for no less than eight drivers including spins from Robby Gordon, Tim Steele and point leader Ernie Irvan.

One driver said that the patch was like driving off asphalt onto a gravel road. The patch, coupled with the heat made conditions troublesome for drivers all day.

Second-year driver Jeff Gordon led 62 laps during the middle part of the race after a timely caution fell, leaving him in the lead and a lot of cars a lap down. However, an oil leak relegated him to 12th place at race’s end.

Two weeks later, Wallace’s drive for four wins in a row would fall short in the Pepsi 400 at Daytona as he would finish 26th, a lap down.