When Ricky Craven was a Sprint Cup driver, his job performance was quantified far differently than today, when he works as an analyst for ESPN.
“I used to get out of the car and look at the scoreboard to see how we did,” Craven said. “Now I look at ratings.”
For the most part, in recent years Nielsen ratings for Sprint Cup races have been flat, and off from their peaks of several seasons ago.
Last year, the TV season got off to a rough start as a long weather delay for the season-opening Daytona 500 led to a ratings drop even though the race was won by the sport’s most popular driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Most people in NASCAR subscribe to the theory that the sport runs on momentum, whether the subject is a driver’s performance or the number of seats sold or the number of TV viewers attracted.
Rain at Daytona dragged down the sport in the early weeks, but as the 2014 Chase, with its first elimination format, began to draw to a close, Nielsen reports indicated an upswing in viewership and ratings.
Now NASCAR heads into a new season with the momentum from the close of 2014 and the energy from a new broadcast team as NBC returns to replace ESPN and TNT.
While many in the sport see a change from three broadcasters to two as a way of simplifying things for fans, Craven said the networks are only a part of what drives the ratings.
“Fans will find whatever station it’s on,” he said. “The more important value to fan is a little controversy, the unexpected, the personalities of the drivers, particularly if you get a couple that don’t really care for each other and show it on the race track.
“That’s worth a lot. Drivers and their personalities have more of an influence on the ratings than anything anybody else can do.”
Darrell Waltrip, who has become almost as well-known for his role as a Fox broadcaster as for his Hall of Fame driving career, said a big hurdle for NASCAR and the networks is attracting younger fans.
“There are the (older) hard-core fans who have followed the sport all their lives,” he said. “And there are a bunch of young kids looking for something that I’m not sure we can ever give them.
“We can’t give them a Juan Montoya hitting a jet dryer and it blowing up every week, but that’s what they like. In action movies today, it’s one wrecking, exploding scene after another.
“We can’t do that every week. … I don’t know that we can ever give the 18-35 set what they’re looking for.
“All we can do is sell what we have. And we have a great product. We’re always trying to come up with new bells and whistles to make the fans feel more involved. We’ve got cameras everywhere we can possibly put them.
“The challenge for all of us is to try to get that fan to understand what it is that we’re doing and how hard it is to do. Even though it’s safer than it’s ever been before, it’s still dangerous.”
Waltrip said that in 2014 NASCAR had a great year, a great Chase, but that still wasn’t enough to cause a dramatic jump in the ratings, largely because that part of the NASCAR season, which NBC will carry, competes head-to-head with football.
“The NFL is the 800-pound gorilla in the room,” he said. “Until we figure out way to define our part of the year and not have it be up against the NFL’s part of the year, I think ratings are always going to be a little soft in the second half.”
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