A new era of sports car racing was born on Dec. 14, 1997, with the birth of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, or NASCAR for short. This new racing organization was founded during a planned meeting to discuss the future of stock car racing at the Streamline Hotel in Daytona Beach.
Since its founding, NASCAR has held over 1,500 races, and has attracted fans from across the world. However, attendance has significantly dropped in the past decade. Bristol’s spring race attendance rates have seen a near 75 percent decrease, according to beyondtheflag.com.
Television ratings in every sport have seen unsettling drops in viewership in past years. However, NASCAR seems to be more drastic. The television ratings from one of NASCAR’s most famous tracks, the Talladega, averaged 4.7 million viewers in 2018. One year prior, the same race averaged 5.9 million viewers, according to Forbes.
In comparison, 21.06 million viewers watched the NFL game between Philadelphia and Dallas that same night, according to Forbes.
“Young people aren’t really interested in anything real. They prefer virtual reality over REAL reality. They would rather stare at a screen than go outside and perform physical activity” Chris Ritterspach said. Ritterspach has a nephew and a niece at Orange, and he has experience watching many NASCAR races.
The overall audience that NASCAR attracts is aging. According to a poll conducted by Digital Media Solutions, 47 percent of fans are between the ages of 18-44, meaning that more than half of NASCAR’S fans are above the age of 44, as of Nov. 29, 2018.
Despite the audience being more on the older side, the drivers are actually younger than ever.
“I think the tracks make it hard to watch,” junior Ben Keller said. “To watch them turn constantly in an oval can get very boring very fast.”
Even fans have proposed ideas of how to make the sport more attractive and interesting. One popular idea is to set up teams and have drivers swap cars. “Each driver does one round in one car. Then at the next round everyone swaps, until every driver has done a round in each car,” one user wrote on a Quora forum about NASCAR.
A lot of older fans actually prefer the oval race format. “As for oval racing, it is what it is. I find it very boring. But then again, the cars are pretty inadequate for road course race tracks, and most NASCAR fans prefer ovals.” amateur race driver Ernesto Gasulla said.
When a majority of fans already prefer the oval racing format, it would be a risky move for NASCAR to spend the money on altering what many of their loyal fans already love about the declining sport.
“I like the sport, but I don’t watch the races very often.” Keller said, who finds it hard to watch NASCAR for long periods of time as well.
NASCAR seems to have no plan in place when it comes to attracting younger fans to the sport. At the rate NASCAR is declining, it’s only a matter of time until they spin out.
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