A few years ago, a former NASCAR crew member explained to me that diecast and merch sales are in the toilet and a lot of the "support" for even the sport's most popular drivers (think the top 8 in the standings) is fabricated to a degree. The sport is basically as popular in America right now as the CFL is in Canada - there are a handful of regions with OK turnout but NASCAR as a whole is just kind of over and a relic of the 2000's, much like the CFL is perceived here. The general public doesn't care about it anymore and only the extreme diehards are left watching on TV and attending events. The direct story I was told involved "a warehouse full of unsold William Byron diecasts."
All NASCAR has to do is get rid if the playoffs, get rid of the yellow line rule, allow drivers to be creative while driving, and give the fans a reason to think its exciting
Nascar could be on its way to how indycar ended up when it split which nearly killed the sport. These tv contracts are just one aspect of the rotting underbelly of this organization
What would it take for someone to start a CART version of NASCAR? I remember SMI constantly threatening to do it under Bruton Smith, but that seemed like Southern family politics between him and the France family more than anything else.
@@thetouchback I would say more like two of the teams (4 cars) possibly leaving at some point with no replacement in sight is somewhat comparable. I don't know if they would go to the lengths of making their own sanctioning body, only time will tell
@@thetouchback They tried to do that in early 2000 when the owners like Junior Johnson and legend drivers like Bobby Allison and Richard Petty wanted to put the sport back where it used to be in the south. They knew NASCAR was heading down this road. NASCAR started bleeding fans in the 90s when they started dropping the favorite short tracks for these bigger tracks for the networks. The networks wanted these tracks in major media markets for the viewerships. Look at how terrible those tracks attracted fans? NASCAR came and bought up the competition like ASA and ARCA. ASA was sold back to the family that founded it, but NASCAR ruined that like they ruined ARCA. Then there is The Hooters Cup now zMax CARS series that was created by the founder of The Hooters chain in memory of the ones who lost their lives in the plane crash with Alan Kulwickie. It is now under new ownership of Dale JR, Kevin Harvick, Jeff Burton and Justin Marks. They are slowly bringing back what NASCAR used to be about short track racing. They expanded to a west coast one as well. The races are on FloRacing. As for some of the Speed shows? Some of them have been moved to MAVTv.
Before 2001 the individual tracks had their own TV deals, one week the race would be on ESPN, next on CBS, then on TNN, back to ESPN. You’re making it sound harder to find the races than it really is. It would be nice for FOX or NBC to have the entire Cup season but that isn’t possible, especially with the long season.
It was a pain back in the early 90's to find the race but now with the internet it shouldn't be a big deal. Nascars tv package is really the least of there problems.
The reason NASCAR is disappearing is obvious, but nobody wants to admit it. It all started when NASCAR went to the "one network" contact with FOX start with the 2001 season (which they sublet some to NBC). You don't intentionally limit your exposure/coverage! The ratings have been slowly backsliding since. Before that you had races on CBS, ABC, NBC, ESPN, TBS & TNN..... even Showtime had races, plus they were not in group blocks, so each network reminded you to watch NASCAR while promoting their next respective race in a couple weeks. Plus each network had a vested interest to have some kind of coverage of the sport even if they did not have the race that week. Currently the coverage is on FOX and NBC who do not promote NASCAR except when it is their turn for their races. The other remaining networks have no need to provide positive coverage of NASCAR since they air no races, hence the downfall in ratings. The NFL has Amazon, NFLN, CBS, ESPN, NBC and Fox. The NBA has ESPN, TNT and about 20 regional networks. MLB has ESPN, FOX, TBS, FS1 and 20 regional networks which are constantly promoting the sport during other programming. None of these sports limit themselves to 1 network. All NASCAR needs to do is bid out the individual races again and the people would return slowly but surely because they would be reminded to watch and NASCAR would have max exposure. Let me put it this way, if you owned a business, would you want 6 people talking/promoting your business or just one person?
And that's a great deal for them. A lot of people aren't going out of their way to watch Indycar, but if it is easy to find on TV and people are going to check it out.
@@thetouchback While its great for people who use TV, for anyone who doesn't its bad. I love open wheel racing, I go to races when I can, I don't know if I will even be able to watch Indy next season.
@@dontworry1302 yeah and it's a major problem for the rest of the world that love Indycar too... Major reasons why 🏴☠️ exist too... When you aren't served, you have to go somewhere for it.
I was a die hard fan of Cup from 2002-2020 and then cut the cord and became a casual fan, I just watch whatever is on free TV and with cup going streaming, I'll see even less races. Thankfully Xfinity is putting every race on CW, free TV. I sure hope it's a huge success. I know I'll be watching ever Xfinity series race. May just stop watching cup completely, especially after this year's joke of a championship.
I really wish the execs from NASCAR would sit down and watch a video like this. I completely agree that you should be able to tune in, and understand what's going on in a NASCAR race within 60 seconds. Quite literally 60 seconds AT MOST. NASCAR is a simple form of racing; it shouldn't take someone long to understand what they're seeing on their TV. If they don't, they're just going to go watch something else. Everything you talked about here, plus the playoffs. I am far from a casual racing fan. I literally work in racing. But for a casual fan, I imagine the playoffs make no sense half the time, or if it does, it probably just seems stupid. I know as racing fans, we all find it stupid, and have since the inception of "The Chase", but I can't imagine a casual fan likes it either. But yes, accessibility is absolutely an issue. If you can't watch races on one channel, at one time, on one day every week, much less people are going to find the sport to begin with. Especially if you're locking it behind streaming service pay walls.
The ideal tv deal for teams to get sponsorship is what indycar is doing: all races on one network channel, but this would force the series to take a smaller deal. It would be a gamble to hope that the sponsors would come.
Man seeing these old SPEED Channel clips takes me back to my childhood in the early to mid 2000's where I watched SPEED almost every day not just for the NASCAR coverage but it was also the only place that actually cared about things like F1, MotoGP & my personal favorite the World Rally Championship (WRC). Because of SPEED & their wonderful coverage, I gained a greater understanding & became a fan of all of those forms of racing & seeing legends like Michael Schumacher, the late Colin McRae & Valentino Rossi at the peak of their careers. Also back in those days, I never would have thought that F1 would reach the level of popularity in the US that it has today especially considering the fact that F1's popularity in the US was at an all time low after the 2005 US GP tire debacle that is easily the worst race in F1 history. It is remarkable to see & what is crazy is that F1 might grow even more in the US now that Cadillac (the first American team in F1 in decades) is entering in 2026 & the potential of seeing American drivers drive for it.
Nascar was never supposed to be a big sport league. It got huge because sponsors could advertise. Then nascar tracks and teams built so much infrastructure that they can't sustain it anymore now that the boom period ended. It was a fad that ended with the economic troubles and also just naturally ran it's course. Now they're having to balance rightsizing and going back to it's roots with new ideas for new/younger folks.
NASCAR ans Indycar are very much dying off and loosing a ton of market share to F1 and its weird to see them be ok with it. In 2009 I went to the Daytona 500 for my birthday and thought it was cool and would like to go to another race. Now, 15 years later, I have no idea when the races are at my "local" tracks. I live 3 hours from Richmond and Dover and I never see them advertised anymore.
Funny thing is F1 is more accessible than NASCAR now since F1 is always promoting their app where you can watch all the races. And their embrace of memes.
Not sure how you can say in this video that it has gotten worse now that NASCAR has expanded their coverage ..... NASCAR was at its height when it has as many media partners as possible (2000 and before) and when they intentionally reduced their coverage to Fox/NBC (2001 and after) that is when the downfall in ratings, attendance and $$$ occurred. In the same timeframe, sports like the NFL INCREASED the number of media partners and have grown since..... and people seem to have no issue knowing where the football game is every week despite it possibly being on a different network each week
The days of dedicated sports channels are going the way of dialup. It's a different world now. F` is able to gain popularity here while being on at ridiculous times. I think it's more about perception and marketing more than anything. There's more to it, such as the awful short track package, but the two items I mentioned are the key I feel.
back in the day, every track negotiated TV rights individually. resulting in races being on a different channel every week. . the whole reason Nascar took over TV rights negotiations was, in large part, an attempt to standardize broadcast rights so you would know where and generally when you could see the broadcast. . rather ironic that Nascar has returned back to the scattergun broadcast approach.
I will say that I've seen more NASCAR on CW ads around central CT than I have seen any other promotion in the last 10 years. But it's easy for them, they took over the entire Xfinity series schedule. Watching Cup next year is gong to be a pain, expecially for practice and qualifying. Not as bad as it was in the 90's tho, you used to have to find races on TBS, TNN, ABC, CBS, TNT, etc all in one year
I'm in the same place as you. I hear crickets about our hometown boy winning the Cup championship. This would be a perfect opportunity to declare a Joey Logano Day in Middletown and have it be a big thing that would promote nascar in an important market of the country being able to draw from NYC and Boston markets. They could bring a showcar or simulator to the town green and make a big festive celebration about it. I remember back as a kid local Walmarts selling nascar drivers merchandise and Casey mears face being plastered all over my local target but since the late 2000s there's been absolutely nothing.
NASCAR is dying. They are using gimmicks to attempt to draw viewers. No one wants to see “southern moonshine boys” drive around in circles, when kids and teens are playing Grand Turismo in GT3 cars and can see them up close and personal at IMSA races.
The thing is it's not even "southern moonshine boys" anymore. It's mainly a bunch of clean cut kids without a hint of an accent. NASCAR wanted to appeal to a wider mainstream audience. Once the novelty of NASCAR racing wore off in the north, they no longer had their large core southern fanbase to fallback on.
Mmmmmmmm...IMSA...@_@ Seriously, the Queen of Motorsports (Sports Car racing) will end up owning everything. They just need to add races, keep course with the costs and rules, and they're pretty much sitting on a massive gold-mine. Also dat V12 Valkyrie is gonna make me buss so damned hard. xD
I've been following auto racing since 1970, when I was 10 years old. NA$CRAP shot themselves in the foot when they started the chase. That pushed out a lot of old longtime fans, me included. Then came stage racing, and that pushed out even more of the serious fans. They, the France family, are looking at profit and getting big TV deals only brings in more money for them and the different channels since now if you want to see the races you have to add channels to your cable package. I can at least say I saw drivers like Richard Petty, Buddy Baker, Cale Yarbough, Bobby Allison, Davey Allison, and many, many more drivers racing in person. No, the Cup Series is not the same and will not get better unless there is change at the top and they try to get the serious fan back.
A few years ago, a former NASCAR crew member explained to me that diecast and merch sales are in the toilet and a lot of the "support" for even the sport's most popular drivers (think the top 8 in the standings) is fabricated to a degree. The sport is basically as popular in America right now as the CFL is in Canada - there are a handful of regions with OK turnout but NASCAR as a whole is just kind of over and a relic of the 2000's, much like the CFL is perceived here. The general public doesn't care about it anymore and only the extreme diehards are left watching on TV and attending events.
The direct story I was told involved "a warehouse full of unsold William Byron diecasts."
The NFL has defiantly got bigger in Canada but with the right direction the CFL will be fine.
Makes me not take the ‘Most Popular Driver’ voting seriously anymore 😂
@@kristenangier9673 They always be voting Chase Elliott when someone else Like Larson or Chastain should be winning it lmao
All NASCAR has to do is get rid if the playoffs, get rid of the yellow line rule, allow drivers to be creative while driving, and give the fans a reason to think its exciting
the problem is, they use the playoffs to manufacture excitement. a full points season wouldn't have produced the wall ride
I don't think that will work. So long as watching a Nascar race takes a chore to start, they will struggle to gain younger audiences.
That will never happen until there are overhauls to Nascar at a fundamental level. a.k.a their management.
Nascar could be on its way to how indycar ended up when it split which nearly killed the sport. These tv contracts are just one aspect of the rotting underbelly of this organization
What would it take for someone to start a CART version of NASCAR? I remember SMI constantly threatening to do it under Bruton Smith, but that seemed like Southern family politics between him and the France family more than anything else.
@@thetouchback I would say more like two of the teams (4 cars) possibly leaving at some point with no replacement in sight is somewhat comparable. I don't know if they would go to the lengths of making their own sanctioning body, only time will tell
@@thetouchback They tried to do that in early 2000 when the owners like Junior Johnson and legend drivers like Bobby Allison and Richard Petty wanted to put the sport back where it used to be in the south. They knew NASCAR was heading down this road. NASCAR started bleeding fans in the 90s when they started dropping the favorite short tracks for these bigger tracks for the networks. The networks wanted these tracks in major media markets for the viewerships. Look at how terrible those tracks attracted fans? NASCAR came and bought up the competition like ASA and ARCA. ASA was sold back to the family that founded it, but NASCAR ruined that like they ruined ARCA. Then there is The Hooters Cup now zMax CARS series that was created by the founder of The Hooters chain in memory of the ones who lost their lives in the plane crash with Alan Kulwickie. It is now under new ownership of Dale JR, Kevin Harvick, Jeff Burton and Justin Marks. They are slowly bringing back what NASCAR used to be about short track racing. They expanded to a west coast one as well. The races are on FloRacing. As for some of the Speed shows? Some of them have been moved to MAVTv.
Before 2001 the individual tracks had their own TV deals, one week the race would be on ESPN, next on CBS, then on TNN, back to ESPN. You’re making it sound harder to find the races than it really is. It would be nice for FOX or NBC to have the entire Cup season but that isn’t possible, especially with the long season.
It was a pain back in the early 90's to find the race but now with the internet it shouldn't be a big deal. Nascars tv package is really the least of there problems.
The reason NASCAR is disappearing is obvious, but nobody wants to admit it. It all started when NASCAR went to the "one network" contact with FOX start with the 2001 season (which they sublet some to NBC). You don't intentionally limit your exposure/coverage! The ratings have been slowly backsliding since.
Before that you had races on CBS, ABC, NBC, ESPN, TBS & TNN..... even Showtime had races, plus they were not in group blocks, so each network reminded you to watch NASCAR while promoting their next respective race in a couple weeks. Plus each network had a vested interest to have some kind of coverage of the sport even if they did not have the race that week. Currently the coverage is on FOX and NBC who do not promote NASCAR except when it is their turn for their races. The other remaining networks have no need to provide positive coverage of NASCAR since they air no races, hence the downfall in ratings.
The NFL has Amazon, NFLN, CBS, ESPN, NBC and Fox. The NBA has ESPN, TNT and about 20 regional networks. MLB has ESPN, FOX, TBS, FS1 and 20 regional networks which are constantly promoting the sport during other programming. None of these sports limit themselves to 1 network. All NASCAR needs to do is bid out the individual races again and the people would return slowly but surely because they would be reminded to watch and NASCAR would have max exposure. Let me put it this way, if you owned a business, would you want 6 people talking/promoting your business or just one person?
And for Indycar they got a new TV Deal with Fox and all 14 races are gonna be on Fox (as in Local TV) next year.
And that's a great deal for them. A lot of people aren't going out of their way to watch Indycar, but if it is easy to find on TV and people are going to check it out.
@@thetouchback While its great for people who use TV, for anyone who doesn't its bad. I love open wheel racing, I go to races when I can, I don't know if I will even be able to watch Indy next season.
@@dontworry1302 yeah and it's a major problem for the rest of the world that love Indycar too... Major reasons why 🏴☠️ exist too... When you aren't served, you have to go somewhere for it.
@@dontworry1302 You can get a roku box for like $20 and watch all the TV you want for no added charge.
I was a die hard fan of Cup from 2002-2020 and then cut the cord and became a casual fan, I just watch whatever is on free TV and with cup going streaming, I'll see even less races. Thankfully Xfinity is putting every race on CW, free TV. I sure hope it's a huge success. I know I'll be watching ever Xfinity series race. May just stop watching cup completely, especially after this year's joke of a championship.
I really wish the execs from NASCAR would sit down and watch a video like this. I completely agree that you should be able to tune in, and understand what's going on in a NASCAR race within 60 seconds. Quite literally 60 seconds AT MOST. NASCAR is a simple form of racing; it shouldn't take someone long to understand what they're seeing on their TV. If they don't, they're just going to go watch something else. Everything you talked about here, plus the playoffs. I am far from a casual racing fan. I literally work in racing. But for a casual fan, I imagine the playoffs make no sense half the time, or if it does, it probably just seems stupid. I know as racing fans, we all find it stupid, and have since the inception of "The Chase", but I can't imagine a casual fan likes it either. But yes, accessibility is absolutely an issue. If you can't watch races on one channel, at one time, on one day every week, much less people are going to find the sport to begin with. Especially if you're locking it behind streaming service pay walls.
The ideal tv deal for teams to get sponsorship is what indycar is doing: all races on one network channel, but this would force the series to take a smaller deal. It would be a gamble to hope that the sponsors would come.
Use a VPN to watch the coverage from the UAE/Brazil, no adverts and always in the same place.
Man seeing these old SPEED Channel clips takes me back to my childhood in the early to mid 2000's where I watched SPEED almost every day not just for the NASCAR coverage but it was also the only place that actually cared about things like F1, MotoGP & my personal favorite the World Rally Championship (WRC). Because of SPEED & their wonderful coverage, I gained a greater understanding & became a fan of all of those forms of racing & seeing legends like Michael Schumacher, the late Colin McRae & Valentino Rossi at the peak of their careers. Also back in those days, I never would have thought that F1 would reach the level of popularity in the US that it has today especially considering the fact that F1's popularity in the US was at an all time low after the 2005 US GP tire debacle that is easily the worst race in F1 history. It is remarkable to see & what is crazy is that F1 might grow even more in the US now that Cadillac (the first American team in F1 in decades) is entering in 2026 & the potential of seeing American drivers drive for it.
Isn’t all their games also going to be taken off most of the stores
because a new license was signed to make new games, the old games can’t legally use the name anymore so they are taking them down
I don't mind the new media deal i have prime but i don't have cable so its nice to be able to watch at least 5 races
Nascar was never supposed to be a big sport league. It got huge because sponsors could advertise. Then nascar tracks and teams built so much infrastructure that they can't sustain it anymore now that the boom period ended. It was a fad that ended with the economic troubles and also just naturally ran it's course. Now they're having to balance rightsizing and going back to it's roots with new ideas for new/younger folks.
I just watch the full race replays on UA-cam now. I have long since given up on cable all together. So what I have to wait a day or two after.
I'm with you. I'm usually busy on Sunday anyway. Spending a weekend sitting on the couch is a luxury.
NASCAR ans Indycar are very much dying off and loosing a ton of market share to F1 and its weird to see them be ok with it. In 2009 I went to the Daytona 500 for my birthday and thought it was cool and would like to go to another race. Now, 15 years later, I have no idea when the races are at my "local" tracks. I live 3 hours from Richmond and Dover and I never see them advertised anymore.
So what’s the tv deal details
I was into racing when I was young. The past few years, I’ve been watching F1 and IndyCAR.
Funny thing is F1 is more accessible than NASCAR now since F1 is always promoting their app where you can watch all the races. And their embrace of memes.
Not sure how you can say in this video that it has gotten worse now that NASCAR has expanded their coverage ..... NASCAR was at its height when it has as many media partners as possible (2000 and before) and when they intentionally reduced their coverage to Fox/NBC (2001 and after) that is when the downfall in ratings, attendance and $$$ occurred. In the same timeframe, sports like the NFL INCREASED the number of media partners and have grown since..... and people seem to have no issue knowing where the football game is every week despite it possibly being on a different network each week
The days of dedicated sports channels are going the way of dialup. It's a different world now. F` is able to gain popularity here while being on at ridiculous times. I think it's more about perception and marketing more than anything. There's more to it, such as the awful short track package, but the two items I mentioned are the key I feel.
They have never and still don't have a way to track TV viewership.
So all that gobbledygook is a bunch of nonsense.
Great video 👍
back in the day, every track negotiated TV rights individually. resulting in races being on a different channel every week.
.
the whole reason Nascar took over TV rights negotiations was, in large part, an attempt to standardize broadcast rights so you would know where and generally when you could see the broadcast.
.
rather ironic that Nascar has returned back to the scattergun broadcast approach.
I will say that I've seen more NASCAR on CW ads around central CT than I have seen any other promotion in the last 10 years. But it's easy for them, they took over the entire Xfinity series schedule. Watching Cup next year is gong to be a pain, expecially for practice and qualifying. Not as bad as it was in the 90's tho, you used to have to find races on TBS, TNN, ABC, CBS, TNT, etc all in one year
I'm in the same place as you. I hear crickets about our hometown boy winning the Cup championship. This would be a perfect opportunity to declare a Joey Logano Day in Middletown and have it be a big thing that would promote nascar in an important market of the country being able to draw from NYC and Boston markets. They could bring a showcar or simulator to the town green and make a big festive celebration about it. I remember back as a kid local Walmarts selling nascar drivers merchandise and Casey mears face being plastered all over my local target but since the late 2000s there's been absolutely nothing.
NASCAR is dying. They are using gimmicks to attempt to draw viewers. No one wants to see “southern moonshine boys” drive around in circles, when kids and teens are playing Grand Turismo in GT3 cars and can see them up close and personal at IMSA races.
The thing is it's not even "southern moonshine boys" anymore. It's mainly a bunch of clean cut kids without a hint of an accent. NASCAR wanted to appeal to a wider mainstream audience. Once the novelty of NASCAR racing wore off in the north, they no longer had their large core southern fanbase to fallback on.
Mmmmmmmm...IMSA...@_@
Seriously, the Queen of Motorsports (Sports Car racing) will end up owning everything. They just need to add races, keep course with the costs and rules, and they're pretty much sitting on a massive gold-mine. Also dat V12 Valkyrie is gonna make me buss so damned hard. xD
Buddy likes biking 🏳️🌈
You do realise that they are the apart of the same company right
@@PJBlickIMSA isn’t gonna own anything because NASCAR owns them lmaooo
I liked the even more when it was Speedvision.
Once Winston left, NASCAR went to trash
I've been following auto racing since 1970, when I was 10 years old. NA$CRAP shot themselves in the foot when they started the chase. That pushed out a lot of old longtime fans, me included. Then came stage racing, and that pushed out even more of the serious fans. They, the France family, are looking at profit and getting big TV deals only brings in more money for them and the different channels since now if you want to see the races you have to add channels to your cable package. I can at least say I saw drivers like Richard Petty, Buddy Baker, Cale Yarbough, Bobby Allison, Davey Allison, and many, many more drivers racing in person. No, the Cup Series is not the same and will not get better unless there is change at the top and they try to get the serious fan back.
There are also no longer any big drivers to connect with either,like why is Chase Elliott the biggest star?
Title is slightly misleading
But it did make me click so….i guess it did its job
Wokeness killed NASCAR
Not really
Congratulations are you are stupid
Yet another Click bait NASCAR is dying video, yeah it's not perfect, but its still here and it'll be here for years to come
Clickbait
More complete bullcrap clickbait. Period